The Social Security Fairness Act of 2023 (SSFA; P.L. 118-273), signed into law on January 5, 2025, repealed two provisions in the Social Security Act: the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP). The changes applied to monthly benefits payable after December 2023. The GPO and WEP were two separate provisions that reduced Social Security or railroad retirement benefits for workers and their eligible family members if they received (or were entitled to) pensions based on earnings from employment not covered by Social Security and not subject to its payroll tax. (Railroad retirement Tier I annuities are designed to be nearly equivalent to Social Security benefits.) The two largest groups of Social Security or railroad retirement beneficiaries who might have been affected by the GPO and WEP were (1) about one-quarter of state and local government employees covered by alternative staff retirement systems and (2) most permanent civilian federal employees hired before January 1, 1984, who were covered by the Civil Service Retirement System or another alternative retirement plan. The reductions in benefits under the GPO and the WEP were designed to place Social Security or railroad retirement beneficiaries who had some noncovered earnings in approximately the same position they would have been in had all their earnings been covered by the Social Security program. The GPO affected certain spouses and survivors of insured workers, while the WEP adjusted benefits for certain retired or disabled workers (and their family members). The GPO was established in 1977 and the WEP in 1983. Supporters of the GPO and the WEP claimed that the provisions were reasonable means to prevent unintended overgenerous benefits that the Social Security benefit formula could provide to individuals with earnings from jobs not covered by Social Security. They also contended that these provisions were in law for more than 40 years, giving individuals ample time to adjust their retirement plans. Critics pointed out that these provisions were not well understood. They argued that many people affected by the provisions were unprepared for smaller Social Security benefits than they had expected in making retirement plans. They further pointed out that affected individuals considered the provisions to be unfair and somewhat arbitrary with respect to how the benefit reductions were computed. Over the more than four decades, lawmakers regularly introduced legislation to repeal or modify these provisions. Upon the passage of the SSFA, affected beneficiaries could receive an increase (adjustment) in their monthly benefits and potentially receive past-due payments for benefits payable dated back to January 2024. In the Social Security Administration’s update on July 7, 2025 (the most recent one), the agency sent more than 3.1 million payments totaling $17 billion to beneficiaries eligible under the SSFA. In its April 15, 2026, report (the most recent one), the Railroad Retirement Board reported that it had completed all SSFA-related adjustments to monthly benefits and had completed issuing all past-due payments, totaling over 12,000 cases and more than $106 million. In addition, current workers who have work experience in jobs that are not subject to the Social Security payroll tax and who are potentially entitled to pensions based on those noncovered earnings in the future will no longer have any future Social Security or railroad retirement benefits reduced by the two provisions. The Board of Trustees’ 2025 annual report on the Social Security trust funds estimated that the SSFA reduced the long-range actuarial balance of the program (i.e., increased the net long-term cost) by 0.14% of taxable payroll. Researchers generally agree that the pre-SSFA GPO and WEP could approximately—not perfectly—reduce unintended overgenerous benefits to certain people due to noncovered employment. Some argue that the Social Security formula cannot distinguish between many high-income noncovered workers and steady low-income covered workers, resulting in unintended windfall benefits, and that the SSFA worsened this problem. Others contend that the SSFA eliminated two complex and poorly understood provisions and that its passage may present an opportunity to make further changes to Social Security coverage or the treatment of noncovered earnings. For example, lawmakers could ultimately eliminate the disparity between beneficiaries who had some noncovered earnings and those with all their earnings covered by the program by extending Social Security coverage to the entire workforce. Lawmakers could also develop a more accurate benefit formula for individuals with earnings from noncovered employment.
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