February 2005

Social Security Reform:
Don't Forget the Unfair Rules
Hurting Hundreds of Thousands of Educators

Reg Weaver
President, NEA

Amid the Social Security reform talk of impending shortfalls, investment yields and transitional costs, it's easy to forget that retirement policy affects real people. For example, it has seriously affected Janice Quas, a woman who went to her high school prom in the late 1960s while her boyfriend went to Vietnam.

"But it's okay, because he came back alive," she says of the man who became her husband and father of their three children. After working as a stay-at-home mother, the two of them both decided to go back to school, and Janice became a teacher at age 38. She still teaches second grade today in Illinois.

Her husband recently passed away, leaving Janice heartbroken to lose her high school sweetheart. Her voice gets hard when she talks about the unfair discovery she made after his death.

"I found out that since I became a teacher, and pay into the state retirement system as a public employee, I am no longer entitled to all of my husband's Social Security benefits."

What Quas is experiencing as a widow and teacher is felt by millions of public employees all over the country.

The reason: arcane provisions in the Social Security law titled the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and Windfall Elimination Program (WEP). These laws were originally put in place to keep high-paid public officials and their spouses from "double dipping" by receiving the full benefits of both the national Social Security and state-backed pension programs that cover public employees in about half of the states. In practice, however, they have had the effect of denying lower-paid public servants the benefits they or their spouses have earned. For example, mid-career professionals moving from the private sector are dismayed to learn that becoming a teacher will mean the loss of Social Security they earned in their previous career.

As the President of the nation's largest teachers union, the National Education Association, I join Quas and millions of others who've dedicated their lives to working with children in asking the Administration and members of Congress to change the law so America's educators can receive the Social Security benefits that they deserve. Even before we consider any major overhaul of the Social Security system, simple fairness dictates that we fix this anomaly that punishes people for choosing careers in public service.