Alaska senators vote in favor of bill expanding Social Security benefits for Alaska’s public sector workers

Alaska’s U.S. senators voted in favor of a bill that is set to increase Social Security benefits for thousands of the state’s residents.

The measure, known as the Social Security Fairness Act, passed the Senate in a 76-20 vote early Saturday and heads now to the desk of President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it.

The bill is set to eliminate the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset, which reduce Social Security benefits for many of Alaska’s public sector workers and their surviving spouses.

The provisions have been in place for four decades, reducing Social Security benefits for people who worked in both Social Security-eligible jobs and for public sector employers that do not pay into Social Security, including those in Alaska.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she’d been working on the legislation for more than 20 years, since she was appointed to the Senate in 2003. Murkowski first co-sponsored legislation the Social Security Fairness Act in February 2003, according to her office.

“It’s been a long arc,” she said in a phone interview on Thursday, after it became clear that the Senate was on a path toward passing the bill. “It was an issue that was presented to me right at the very beginning.”

She said state government workers, teachers and firefighters are among the constituents who brought the issue to her attention.

“Any meeting I’ve ever had with teachers — this is their number one ask. Any meeting that I have with firefighters, law enforcement — this is always top of their list,” said Murkowski.

For years, she said both Democrats and Republicans shied away from taking on the provisions because they were tied to broader issues concerning Social Security, Murkowski said.

The House voted 327-75 to pass the bill last month, paving the way for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to bring the bill to a vote in the U.S. Senate before the holiday recess.

Murkowski said there had been a behind-the-scenes push to delay consideration of the measure until next year, when Republicans will control both the U.S. House and Senate, and President-elect Donald Trump will return to the White House.

“There were just too many of us that were co-sponsors to this bill who said, ‘no, we’ve been promised before that we would have hearings on this.’ We’ve been promised before that we would see action on this and it didn’t come, so when you have it in front of you, you seize the moment,” said Murkowski.

Opponents of the measure raised concern about the predicted $190 billion cost of the bill in the coming decade, which is expected to hasten a crisis in funding the Social Security program.

“Yes, by eliminating the GPO and the WEP, it does kind of move forward that tipping point,” said Murkowski. “And we have to address that.”

But she said “there has been a period of unfairness for far, far, far too long, and it needs to be corrected,” adding that she hoped the passage of the legislation will lead to continued work on addressing broader concerns regarding Social Security funding.

Joelle Hall, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, the state’s largest labor organization, said in a statement that the provisions set to be eliminated by the bill were “punishing public employees and their heirs for dedicating their lives to their community.”

In a written statement, U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said he voted for the bill because the Alaska Legislature passed a unanimous resolution earlier this year supporting the federal legislation.

Sullivan said Alaska workers who qualify for the state’s retirement plans “have been penalized by the Social Security Administration and the IRS for being pushed into a system they didn’t choose.”

“I’ve been working on an Alaska-specific solution for this issue for years. The legislation we passed tonight will fix this problem, strengthen our state’s workforce, help with recruitment efforts, and benefit hard-working Alaska families,” Sullivan said in a statement issued shortly after the bill passed.