Expanded Social Security Benefits

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Senate has advanced a bill which will expand and
presumably President Biden will sign it, which will expand social
Security benefits for some Americans, some three million Americans. Let's
get some details here, Evan Brown, Fox News Radios back, Evan,
good morning. What'd they do here?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Good morning? Yeah, this is known as the Social Security
Fairness Act, and it passed both the House and the Senate.
The Senate passed it this weekend. It passed overwhelmingly, so
so that means it has some real bipartisan momentum, and
the president is expected to sign it, President Biden, that is,

(00:41):
since I have to clarify which one I'm talking about there. Yeah, So,
but anyhow, what this bill does is it eliminates some
older laws that required a civil servant retiree receive only
a partial Social Security benefit that was off set by

(01:01):
their pension. And what this now does is it kind
of puts a civil service retiree on the same footing
as any other retiree who provided they paid fully into
the Social Security system, they can get the full benefit
as well as there any pension or you know, for
one K or I already they have.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
So they paid into the Social Security system before they
were federal or government employees.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
I believe that they were paying into it we are
regarding their other homeworking life.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Yeah, this is the thing about it. It did impact
the amount of Social Security that certain families would receive
by comparison to other families because they had a supplement
from a different pension fund, and in many cases that

(01:53):
was a defined benefit fund, meaning it was guaranteed, as
opposed to a defined contribution fund for a one K plan.
And I know this was overwhelmingly popular on Capitol Hill,
but they did have other pension programs that provided some
income to them. I don't know exactly how much it

(02:15):
priv varied, but I'm not I was looking for what
made this brutally unfair, and I found it difficult to
find it. Brutally unfair. Unfair maybe, but brutally unfair.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Well. I have one report here Rosie and Evan that
says the workers affected are those who are eligible for
government pensions from jobs where they didn't pay into Social Security,
but who did pay into the programs through other jobs
or whose spouses did so. It's a little bit complicated,
but Evan, it is wildly popular in both the House

(02:47):
and the Senate.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Well it is, and you imagine that in all states
there are civil servants who qualified for this, including teachers
and firefighters. Those are not federal employees. Remember that, you know,
I'm often employed very very locally. But this does clear
up some things for them to be able to get
a bit more in their retirement years.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
It does. But for example, in Omaha, the police and
fire pension funds here in Omaha makes Social Security look
like loose change. They absolutely are some of the richest
public sector pensions in the country. And how much did
they pay into Social Security by comparison to how much

(03:29):
they contributed into their pension fund probably varies from person
to person. But nobody around here is complaining about their
retirement benefits.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Oh okay, that's very true. There you go. I mean,
you know there are people who will complain and won't
complain about it depends on, perhaps I would say, where
they live and what their expensive situation is. As everyone knows,
retirees don't get out of things like inflation, right. They
still have to pay for and gas like everyone else

(04:01):
does at those same prices. They may or may not
have tax situations in their state that are higher or whatever.
The case may be from property tax to state income
tax and things like that. And so this was obviously
popular enough among legislators at the federal level to make
this change, and we expect President Biden to sign it,

(04:22):
and he's kind of got a short window to do that.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
But I don't know if you don't answer to this,
but as as Mo says on this email, apparently this
new bill is going to give him an increase of
three percent, and the actual cola for everybody else is
like two point three percent. Any idea why that is?

Speaker 2 (04:40):
You're talking about the we are? Yeah, I couldn't. I
wouldn't be able to talk about that now. You know,
three percent for a lot of people is what is
what used to be normal. I don't think it's very
normal today. But that's what Congress decided to do for it.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Though.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
I got a question, how much more pressure sure will
this put on the Social Security Trust Fund? We're talking
now in solvency by twenty thirty three. How much quicker
will we get to insolvency based on this? Based on
what you know?

Speaker 2 (05:11):
I don't you know, considering it's two point four million
people who won't be doing this indefinitely because they're I
hate to sound morbid, but they're in their later years right.
So exactly how much it means going forward, I don't know,
but you know enough. Look when seventy five percent of
your members of Congress are voting in favor of this,

(05:34):
they believe it to benefit.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
So yeah, very good Avan, Merry Christmas. Always good to
have you on. Appreciate you, bet you too, Evan Brown,
Fox News Radio here on KPABS Morning News