The bill eliminates two provisions that prevented public sector employees from receiving full Social Security benefits, which their unions strongly opposed.
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Senate on Dec. 21 passed a bipartisan bill that will enable government employees, their survivors, and disabled persons to receive more money from the Social Security program, which will cost up to $195 billion over 10 years.
The
Social Security Fairness Act, a bill sponsored by retiring Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), will repeal the program’s “government pension offset”—a provision that reduces Social Security payments to beneficiaries who also receive monthly pensions from federal, state, or local governments.
It will also repeal the “windfall elimination provision,” which reduces payments to beneficiaries when they receive some private pensions or disability payments. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that these repeals will cost $195.6 billion over a 10-year period until 2034, increasing the federal budget deficit by that amount without any corresponding revenue.
The bill previously passed the House of Representatives with a two-thirds majority vote of 327 yeas to 75 nays. In the Senate, it was passed by a vote of 76 yeas to 20 nays. The bill will now be presented to President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it into law.
“A bipartisan majority of the U.S. House of Representatives showed up for the millions of Americans—police officers, teachers, firefighters, and other local and state public servants—who worked a second job to make ends meet or began a second career to support their families after retiring from public service,”
wrote Graves and Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.)—another retiring member of Congress, who is running for governor of Virginia in 2025 and who co-sponsored the bill.
“These two provisions unfairly reduce or eliminate earned Social Security benefits for more than 2 million Americans who’ve devoted their careers to public service,” they wrote in a press release after the bill passed the House on Nov. 12.
The bill has been opposed by fiscal conservatives, who argue that its cost is too high amid the country’s large fiscal deficit, which reached $624 billion in the first three months of fiscal year 2025, an increase of 64 percent over the same period last year. Critics believe the bill will worsen country’s significant sovereign indebtedness, which is currently $36 trillion or 123 percent of the value of the U.S. economy, measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
“The Senate voted to blow a hole in the Social Security Trust fund, expanding benefits by $200 billion without any corresponding reduction in spending thus speeding up the bankruptcy of Social Security,”
wrote Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the Senate’s most prominent fiscal conservative who has regularly objected to large spending bills.
“This bill is absurd - and bankrupts Social Security 6 months earlier,”
wrote Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who is Paul’s counterpart in the House on spending advocacy. The Social Security Trust Fund is estimated to become
insolvent—unable to pay the required benefits—in the year 2034.
Paul had sought to amend the bill with a provision that would raise the federal retirement age by three months every year, for 12 years, to 70 years old, which he suggests will offset the cost of the bill. The amendment was not included in the final version of the bill.
Many unions and interest groups celebrated the bill’s passage, which will give their members more money. “The passage of the Social Security Fairness Act is long overdue, and we are close to ending this injustice and providing relief to the millions of Americans who have been unfairly denied benefits they earned through their work,”
wrote Patrick Yoes, president of the National Fraternal Order of Police, which represents more than 377,000 police officers across the United States. “Let’s finish the work and get this bill to the President.”
