re: HR 82 - Social Security Fairness Act

My issue with the problem is that this bill is that it could have been a Social Security reform bill and raise the bar on earning Social Security benefits.

One thing I would have done is increase the number of quarters needed to become eligible for Social Security benefits. I would have also raised the income required to be considered a quarter to something like 10k per quarter, it only took 6,300 in income to make 4 quarters in 2023.

Under the current rules, it takes 40 quarters and you can earn 4 quarters per year. That means you are Social Security eligible after working 10 years. If you increased that to 80 or 100 quarters, that would increase the number of years you need to work to become eligible for benefits.

So if you make it more difficult to qualify, the GPO and WEP fix themselves by making it harder to qualify for both. It would also make it harder for immigrants to qualify now that you need more quarters to qualify. Let’s face it, some of the social security trust fund is now going across the border to Mexico for migrants that turned 62 after they came over and worked for 10 years picking vegetables.

Wholesale changes to the quarter system, could help stabilize the fund, by making it more difficult to become eligible without having to change retirement ages.

It also ensures that if you want to play the game for both Social Security and a pension that either it is for spousal benefits or you physically worked in both the private and government sectors for a long enough time to put skin in the game for both.


But congrats to Graves and Cassidy for pushing this through. My mom got hit with this. Years ago my mom retired with a school pension. My dad passed away and she couldn’t collect his full social security benefit.