The U.S. House of Representatives today passed the Social Security Fairness Act (H.R. 82), which would repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset laws that reduce or even eliminate Social Security benefits for millions of public service workers. The National Education Association has been a leading advocate working to repeal these unfair and punitive laws. “Educators dedicate their lives to public service, but when it is time to retire, far too many find that they have been stripped of the Social Security and retirement benefits they earned due to an unjust and morally wrong penalty. Not only do the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO) exclusively punish educators, firefighters, and police officers, but these laws discourage people from pursuing public service careers. Tonight, the House took a historic step in repealing these punitive and discriminatory laws. “The House’s passage of the bipartisan Social Security Fairness Act is a major milestone and a huge victory brought forth by the tireless advocacy of educators and other public servants. Repealing GPO-WEP has been a decades-long priority for the National Education Association, and on behalf of our 3 million members, we thank Reps. Spanberger and Graves for their leadership on this issue. We urge the Senate to act with urgency and pass this bill as soon as possible so that we can finally help eliminate this unfair penalty on retirement benefits. Record levels of Americans are demanding a change to these archaic and punitive laws. The time to act is now because everyone should be able to retire with dignity and receive the benefits they earned through a lifetime of public service.”

The Inspector General for the Social Security Administration (SSA) has designated March 4, 2021 as National “Slam the Scam” Day—an outreach campaign to raise public awareness of government imposter telephone scams.  This is part of National Consumer Protection Week, February 28 – March 6, 2021.  We are asking you to share information about “Slam the Scam” Day with your clients, friends, and family.  In 2020, the Federal Trade Commission received over 178,000 complaints of government imposter scams. Of those, 10% said they lost money to a scammer—a total of $174.2 million.  To prevent further losses, we urge everyone to exercise caution when receiving calls from someone claiming to be from a government agency. To prevent further losses, we urge everyone to exercise caution when receiving calls from someone claiming to be from a government agency.  Our consumer protection message is simple:  (1) Hang up on suspicious calls from “government officials” calling about a problem with your Social Security number or account. (2) NEVER make payments with gift cards, wire transfers, or by mailing cash. (3) Report Social Security scams to OIG.SSA.GOV. (4) Report other scams to reportfraud.ftc.gov. We have an outreach kit below with the following resources you can use in your communications: Details of National “Slam the Scam” Day events on Twitter and Facebook; A Social Security phone scam awareness flyer you can email or print; Facebook and Twitter content that you can customize or use as is; Infographics you can disseminate or print as bookmarks, coasters, stickers or labels, or card stock; and A list of resources and information about government imposter scams to use and share.