By STEPHEN GROVES
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is pushing towards a vote on laws that would supply full Social Safety advantages to thousands and thousands of individuals, organising potential passage within the remaining days of the lame-duck Congress.
Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., stated Thursday he would start the method for a remaining vote on the invoice, often known as the Social Safety Equity Act, which might remove insurance policies that at present restrict Social Safety payouts for roughly 2.8 million individuals.
Schumer stated the invoice would “ensure Americans are not erroneously denied their well-earned Social Security benefits simply because they chose at some point to work in their careers in public service.”
The laws handed the Home on a bipartisan vote, and a Senate model of the invoice launched final yr gained 62 cosponsors. However the invoice nonetheless wants assist from no less than 60 senators to cross Congress. It will then head to President Biden.
A long time within the making, the invoice would repeal two federal insurance policies — the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Authorities Pension Offset — that broadly scale back funds to 2 teams of Social Safety recipients: individuals who additionally obtain a pension from a job that’s not coated by Social Safety and surviving spouses of Social Safety recipients who obtain a authorities pension of their very own.
Conservatives have opposed the invoice, decrying its price. However on the identical time, some Republicans have pushed Schumer to deliver it up for a vote.
Sen. Invoice Cassidy, R-La., stated final month that the present federal limitations “penalize families across the country who worked a public service job for part of their career with a separate pension. We’re talking about police officers, firefighters, teachers, and other public employees who are punished for serving their communities.”
He predicted the invoice would cross.
