RH Jones re: GPO/WEP

From RH Jones, May 16, 2009
Subject: Educators in all 50-states lose because of the GPO/WEP

To all:

This is a copy of an article in the NEA today “This Active Life” The magazine for NEA-Retired Members – of which I am one. It has a wonderfully interesting new twist on the GPO/WEP that makes sense for all 50- states in the USA, not just the 15-states that have public defined benefit pensions.

The author, Sue Shaw of Penobscot Maine makes it very clear especially in the last 2 or 3 sentences. Please read. It will help our desire to have the GPO/WEP rescinded in the US Congress and Senate. Especially, if you will, forward this on to every retired or active educator that you may know who lives in state other than Ohio and write to your own US Representatives. All educators across the USA are hurt by the GPO/WEP -- I, for one, have lost $450 per month, compounded twice per year, since the Reagan Administration took it away.

RHJones, retired Ohio teacher member of the OH STRS and a proud member of the Concerned Ohio Retired Teachers (CORE) union

THIS ACTIVE LIFE MAY 2009

Let's Be Clear about GPO/WEP

I just received a letter from a new member of the House stating that "Maine is one of a handful of states impacted by these provisions, and I look forward to working with my colleagues from the other 14 states to make sure this is corrected for the people who are penalized." That sentence, along with the letters published in the last issue of This Active Life, mandated that I emphasize that it is not only workers in 15 states that are affected by the Social Security (SS) offsets of the Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision (GPO/WEP).

When we first started this battle against the offsets back in the early 90s, we understood that people whose work history crossed the public/private line were being deprived of earned SS benefits. We learned that in fifteen states teachers and most public employees pay into a state retirement system. As a result, we started referring to "the 15 affected states." Big mistake on our part! Now those fifteen states are referred to as the only ones that are hit by the offsets, and people fail to realize that where you live is NOT the trigger for the. GPO/WEP gun!

What triggers the reduction of an earned SS benefit by either WEP or GPO is the taking of a pension for non-Social Security covered work ...not where you live. People in every state are losing SS benefits that they worked for and were promised. Over 75 percent of the emergency responders all across the nation, such as fire and police, have had their earned SS cut because of these laws. Almost one half of the nation's teachers lose significant earned and promised SS benefits to GPO/WEP.

Our society is mobile and versatile .... People unaffected by the offsets at one point in their lives can find that situation changing very easily.

SUE SHAW, Penobscot, Maine