The House has just voted yes to increase Social Security benefits for some beneficiaries

A bill to amend the social security rules for pensioners was passed in the House of Representatives on Tuesday 327 legislators vote to support the measure.

Now the proposal goes to the Senate, where the chamber’s version of the bill has 62 co-sponsors“exceeds the majority needed to pass the bill on the US Senate floor and send it to the president’s desk to be signed into law,” Reps. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., and Garret Graves, R-La., co-sponsors of the bill, said in a joint statement.

The proposal – called Social Security Fairness Act — would repeal rules that reduce Social Security benefits for people who receive retirement benefits from state or local governments.

It would eliminate the windfall elimination provision, or WEP, which reduces Social Security benefits for people who worked in jobs where they did not pay Social Security payroll taxes and now receive pension or disability benefits from those employers. About 3% of all Social Security recipients — about 2.1 million people — were affected by WEP in December 2023, according to the Congressional Research Service.

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The bill would also eliminate the public pension offset, or GPO, which reduces Social Security benefits for spouses, widows and widowers who also receive pension checks. From December, about 1% of all Social Security recipients — or 745,679 people — were affected by the GPO, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Those rules, which have been in place for decades, reduce the incomes of certain retired police officers, teachers, firefighters and other public employees, Graves said during a speech Tuesday on the House floor.

“This has been 40 years of treating people differently and discriminating against a certain set of workers,” Graves said.

“They’re not people who are overpaid; they’re not people who are underworked,” he said.

Larson’s proposalwhich has 188 House cosponsors, would also repeal the WEP and GPO while implementing other temporary benefit increases. To help pay for these changes, it would require people with more than $400,000 in income to pay more Social Security taxes.

On Tuesday, Larson voted against law on justice on social security, as well as another billthe Act on equal treatment of public servants. The latter bill would use a new formula for Social Security retirement and disability benefits for retirees instead of eliminating the WEP. It would not change the GPO.

The bill, which was proposed by Rep. Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, failed when it was brought up for a vote.

“I could not vote for the bills on the floor tonight because they are not paid for and therefore put Americans’ hard-earned benefits at risk,” Larson said in a statement. “It would deeply hurt the five million of our fellow Americans who receive below the poverty check and the nearly half of all Social Security recipients who depend on their earned benefits for the majority of their income.”

The Social Security Fairness Act will add an estimated $196 billion to deficits over the next decade, Congressional Budget Office have estimated. It would also move Social Security fund depletion dates closer to an estimated six months, according to Committee on a Responsible Federal Budget.

“The long-term solvency of Social Security is an issue that Congress needs to address,” Spanberger said on the House floor Tuesday.

“But that’s a different issue than allowing Americans who did their part, who contributed their earnings, for them to retire with dignity,” she said.

But critics say Social Security’s funding problems should be a priority for Congress now. The program’s actuaries project that the trust fund used to pay pension benefits may be exhausted in 2033after which 79% of the benefits are paid out.

“This is not the right policy,” said Romina Boccia, director of budget and rights policy at the Cato Institute. “That’s what the special interests pushed for, and the politicians are responsive to their demands.”

While the alternative bill proposed by Arrington would not address the GPO, it would provide a “fairer formula” for the WEP, Boccia said. However, broader changes are needed to strengthen the program’s finances.

“We should reform Social Security so that it provides basic income security to the most vulnerable Americans in old age without increasing the debt or tax burden faced by younger workers,” Boccia said.