Dayton Daily News visits WEP issue

EDITORIAL
Our View: Teachers' complaints earn partial credit
By Dayton Daily News
Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Public school teachers are working hard to eliminate what they see as injustices in how Social Security benefits are given.

They have some good points, but they — and other public employees — are wrong that Social Security rules need to be totally reordered. Fine-tuning should fix the problems.

The complaints are about the "government pension offset" and "windfall elimination provision."

The government pension offset reduces spousal benefits under Social Security. Specifically, when a spouse covered by Social Security dies and the surviving spouse gets a civil service pension in a state (such as Ohio) where public employees don't pay into Social Security, the survivor's Social Security benefit is reduced in an amount equal to two-thirds of the survivor's government pension.

In many cases, this rules means that a survivor receives nothing from Social Security.

The "windfall elimination provision" comes in to play when a public employee has spent part of his or her career covered by Social Security, but receives a pension under an exempt civil service system. Again, the employee's Social Security benefit likely will be reduced.

Teachers have been leading the charge to repeal both provisions. They argue that the government pension offset creates hardships especially among widows who earn a modest teacher's pension. They also say that the windfall provision unfairly penalizes mid-career professionals who have made the switch to teaching.

Legislation is pending in the House and Senate to get rid of the rules. The House version has more than 300 co-sponsors, including U.S. Reps. David Hobson, R-Springfield, and Michael Turner, R-Centerville. E-mails and online petitions pushing the bill have been flying in recent days in hopes that the House will consider the bill this fall.

That seems unlikely if only because the cost of eliminating the two provisions was estimated in 2003 to exceed $61 billion over 10 years. That would be a huge, new expense for Social Security — and an overreaction.

The provisions can create some inequities, but they are supported by sound policy and repealing them would create new unfairness.

The Social Security Act, for example, already reduces a survivor's benefit when he or she also receives a Social Security payment. The government pension offset is designed to make a similar adjustment to a survivor's benefit when a surviving spouse receives a government pension.

Similarly, the Social Security system has special rules for low-income workers. The goal is to provide them a minimum benefit even if they spent all of their working years in a low-paying jobs. Workers who spend just part of their career covered by the Social Security system could, by virtue of their limited service, be mistaken for low-income workers — when, in fact, they may be receiving a substantial civil service pension. The windfall elimination provision is supposed to prevent that from happening.

Repealing both policies would give former public employees receiving civil service pensions a preferred status. However, teachers are right that the government pension offset and windfall elimination provisions do not always work as intended. One critic aptly calls them "a blunt instrument."

The best solution would be to tailor reforms to eliminate specific injustices — not replace one blunt instrument with another.