The bill at the heart of the push, also dubbed the Social Security Fairness Act, seeks to do away with the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO).
The bill enjoys support from more than 100 House Republicans, and almost four dozen have cosigned the effort to use what’s known as a discharge petition to force consideration of the bill.
But the strategy is rubbing some in the conference the wrong way.
“In a well-run Congress, no legislator signs a discharge petition if you’re a majority. That is a rule that is never broken,” Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) told The Hill. “And the fact that 47 of my colleagues signed a discharge petition shows that we have an utter lack of discipline.”
Supporters of the bill argue it seeks to prevent those who have worked in public service — including “police officers, firefighters, educators, and federal, state, and local government employees” — from seeing their Social Security benefits “unfairly” reduced.
But critics have raised questions of fairness around the bill, while also pointing to scoring from the Congressional Budget Office that estimates the measure could cost upward of $190 billion over a decade.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) called the measure a “bad direction to go,” and said he would “oppose it.”
“I will support a version that I co-sponsor, which would be except $34 billion which we ought to pay for, but, but it’s responsible. The one that … they’re discharging is irresponsible, and they can’t defend it, and they won’t defend it, except that they’re going to say things like, ‘We’re going to make everybody whole.’ They are not.”
The Hill’s Aris Folley has more here.
