At the beginning of the year, millions of beneficiaries had their full benefits restored to them due to the Social Security Fairness Act being signed into law. The Social Security Fairness Act mainly impacts public sector workers who had previously had their benefits reduced due to the fact that other pensions had been provided to them by their employers. The impacted cohort of public sector employees will also qualify to receive a once-off retroactive payment to make up for the reduction in benefits they had faced in the past.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) had initially said that the processing of these cases would be completed by early November, whilst the previous Biden Administration estimated that it would take upwards of a year to be processed. Despite these estimations, it appears that the SSA has been able to streamline this task and according to a July 7 press release from the agency, all SSFA cases have now been successfully processed.
Here is what you need to know.
The Social Security Fairness Act
By coming into effect, the Social Security Fairness Act effectively brought an end to both the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO). Under the provisions of the WEP and the GPO, some three million public sector employees — including teachers, firefighters, police officers, and certain federal employees — had their benefits reduced since their employers were providing pensions to them and as a result, they were not required to pay into Social Security payroll taxes. Some of these employees still faced benefit reductions even if they had paid into the Social Security payroll tax due to other employment.
Subsequently, the impacted cohort will now have their full benefits restored to them and in addition to this, they will also receive a once-off retroactive payment dating back to January 2024.
SSFA case processing
In May, Frank Bisignano — formerly the CEO of Fiserv — was appointed as Commissioner of the SSA and amongst his first duties was the overseeing of the SSFA case adjustments. Whilst the SSA initially estimated that the cases would be updated by November, Bisignano set July as a goal to complete this task. In pursuit of this, SSA employees were asked to prioritize SSFA case and overtime had been offered to them to work on processing these cases over the weekends.
“My top priority is to transform SSA into a model of excellence—an organization that operates at peak efficiency and delivers outstanding service to every American,” Commissioner Frank Bisignano asserted. “The American people have waited long enough for better service, and they deserve the absolute best from their government. I am deeply grateful to our dedicated employees who are already making this turnaround a reality.”
The vast majority of cases were adjusted rather speedily due to the agency’s use of automation and as a result, by June more than 80% of the cases had been updated. The remaining cases had to be adjusted manually due to its complex nature. As of the end of June, 99% of the cases had already been adjusted, and now, as per a recent press release from the SSA dated July 7, all of the SSFA cases have been updated and payments to the approximately 3 million impacted individuals have been made. This is a milestone achievement for the agency and its new commissioner as the task has now been completed several months ahead of schedule.
According to the SSA in its press release, it has now completed “over 3.1 million payments to all who were entitled under the Social Security Fairness Act (SSFA) five months ahead of schedule.”
In addition to this achievement, the SSA has also stated that it is “reducing the average speed of answer (ASA) on the 800 Number to 13 minutes,” as well as “optimizing technology on the 800 Number so that 90 percent of calls handled are now served via automated self-service options or convenient callbacks, minimizing hold times.”