President Biden on Sunday signed legislation expanding Social Security benefits for millions of retired Americans, including firefighters, police officers and teachers. Those beneficiaries will also receive a lump sum in the thousands of dollars to make up for the shortfall in benefits they should have received in , the president said.
The Social Security Fairness Act eliminates two federal policies that barred employees with a public pension from collecting their full benefits under the federal retirement program and that reduced benefits for those workers' surviving spouses and family members. Among those who joined Mr. Biden at the signing ceremony was year-old Eliseo Jimenez, who walked from his home in Lubbock, Texas, to Washington, D.
The teen, now a high school senior, made the trek after watching his grandmother and her elderly neighbors struggle to get by on their monthly benefits. The new law came in just under the wire, with Mr. Biden signing it only weeks before the end of his presidency and after the Senate on December 21 voted to pass the measure in the waning hours of the th Congress. House lawmakers approved the bill , known as H.
The push to enhance Social Security payments for public pension recipients has been decades in the making, with the Senate holding its first hearings into the policies in The Social Security Fairness Act had bipartisan support, yet faced last-minute objections from some Republicans due to its cost.
The benefits hike under the new law would be retroactive to December As a result, eligible recipients who previously only received partial benefits will get a full payment retroactive to a year ago. Biden said after signing the bill into law. That said, the new law does not address the "tremendous financial impact on the trust funds and the challenging [Social Security Administration] implementation procedures that will be required," said Martha Shedden, president of the National Association of Registered Social Security Analysts.
