The bill passed by the House to reform Social Security is still stalling in the Senate as questions arise about the way forward.
The House approved the bill – which would have repealed legislation supporters say led to arbitrary cuts in benefits for some government workers – earlier this month. But some are worried about the measure’s chances in the Senate as lawmakers face a clock before the new Congress begins.
“There has been talk about trying to make it part of the year-end negotiations. I think that, I think it’s an attempt to kill it,” Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), who authored the bill, said before Congress left town for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Makuva expressed his confidence that this bill, which passed with nearly 300 votes in this committee, has support in the Senate to pass it as an independent bill. But he added that “anything else is putting us on the slow path to death – and I think it’s intentional.”
If passed, the bill, known as the Social Security Fairness Act, would eliminate the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO).
Experts say the tax laws are aimed at preventing people who have worked a lot in the public sector from collecting their pensions and paying more for Social Security. The GPO also administers reduced benefits for spouses who receive a state pension.
But the cases where the policies led to- or non-adjustment of the beneficiaries helped fuel calls for changes or a complete revision of the measures.
Graves – with Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) and Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) – wrote letters to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last week urging urgent consideration of the legislation.
“For the first time in history, you have an opportunity to bring this bill to the final stage,” they wrote. “We urge you, on behalf of the approximately 2.5 million retired people affected by WEP and GPO in every state in the country, to bring the Social Security Fairness Act (HR82) before the US Senate for a vote.”
Hill reached out to Schumer and McConnell’s offices to talk.
The letter came on the heels of the measure’s passage in the House. But it didn’t happen without some drama.
Despite the overwhelming support for the bill, some Republicans opposed the plan put forward by supporters to push the bill through the floor.
The maneuver, also known as a motion to withdraw, allows members to override the leadership to force consideration of legislation. While it is not uncommon for minority party members to try to drop a petition, it is rarely successful as the 218-signature threshold requires majority party members to remove their leaders.
“In a well-run Congress, no member of parliament signs an amnesty petition if you are in the majority. That is the law that can never be broken,” Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) said back in September. “And the fact that 47 of my colleagues have signed a petition to resign shows that we have not held back.”
The bill also came up short before Congress returned from recess earlier this month, when members of the House Freedom Caucus tried to block the measure.
In addition to some of the GOP’s concerns surrounding the strategy used to approve the bill’s consideration, some conservatives have also raised alarms about the bill’s projected cost. The Congressional Budget Office estimated earlier this year that the bill could cost more than $190 billion over 10 years.
Many experts said changes are needed to the law, but they also warned against removing WEP and GPO, while also raising questions of discrimination.
“They were created at a time when the government didn’t have all the information it can get today, so they had to have some kind of bad policy to do it,” said Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. , told The Hill earlier this year. “And so, on average, it’s true, meaning that, on average, people are being treated well. But it doesn’t necessarily work well in everything.”
But, he added, “if you have some people being treated unfairly, the law of averages means you have some people getting a better deal than they should be getting.”
“The end to that is to fix the form,” he argued, not to remove the rules altogether.
There is bipartisan support on the Senate side for removing the restrictions. But its next steps are unclear.
Asked about the prospect of the bill’s passage, Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of more than 60 senators who support the bill in the Senate, said: “We’ll see.”
“Republicans, I think it’s still an open question whether they want to do anything more than have [continuing resolution] then we will leave the city, but we will see,” he added.
Congress now has until December 20 to pass legislation to keep the government open or risk a shutdown.
Lawmakers on both sides are hoping that Congress will pass a temporary moratorium, also known as a continuing resolution, until early next year to stop the spending spree during the holiday season. But they face a tough schedule and several things to look out for before the end of the year.
“I have a big list of priorities,” Wyden told The Hill, adding then “a lot of things I want to see done, and I think they’re in the public eye that’s bipartisan.”
Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This article may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and video ads, go to the Hill.