The Social Security Fairness Act was signed into law in January by former President Joe Biden and eliminated the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset that had brought down Social Security benefits for certain workers who were in the public sector and had also received pensions that were not covered under Social Security.
The Congressional Research Service estimated that in December 2023, there were 745,679 people, about 1 percent of all Social Security beneficiaries, who had their benefits reduced by the Government Pension Offset. About 2.1 million people, or about 3 percent of all beneficiaries, were affected by the Windfall Elimination Provision.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) also estimated in September 2024 that eliminating the Windfall Elimination Provision would boost monthly payments to the affected beneficiaries by an average of $360 by December 2025.
Ending the Government Pension Offset would increase monthly benefits in December 2025 by an average of $700 for 380,000 recipients getting benefits based on living spouses, according to the CBO. The increase would be an average of $1,190 for 390,000 surviving spouses getting a widow or widower benefit.
Those amounts would increase over time with Social Security’s regular cost-of-living adjustments.
The change is to payments from January 2024 and beyond, meaning the SSA would owe back-dated payments. The measure, as passed by Congress, says the Social Security commissioner “shall adjust primary insurance amounts to the extent necessary to take into account” changes in the law.
Earlier this year, the SSA said that individuals impacted under the Fairness Act started to get “retroactive benefits” and that the agency was increasing monthly benefit payments to people whose benefits had been affected by the two provisions, dating back to January 2024. Meanwhile, people covered under the change should have received their new monthly benefit in April 2025 for their March 2025 benefit.
In a May 27 update, the agency said that it has been able to “expedite payments using automation” and that “for the many complex cases that cannot be processed automatically, additional time is required to manually update the records and pay both retroactive benefits and the new benefits amount.”
“We are expediting these cases now. We are releasing retroactive benefits and sending new monthly benefit amounts as we process each case, with the expectation that all beneficiary records will be updated by early November 2025,” the update said.
The Epoch Times contacted the SSA for comment on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for the agency told media outlets on Tuesday that the SSA is “working to exceed its estimate” under Commissioner Frank Bisignano. The new commissioner had told senators during his confirmation hearing that he would finish the process “while the weather is warm,” the spokesperson said.
