re: HR 82 - Social Security Fairness Act

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You are not understandig this. Mary is a retired public school teacher and Sue is a retired private school teacher. Both are married to retired plant workers. Mary is receiving her teacher retirement but no social security. Sue is receiving social security but no teacher pension. Both husbands die the same year. By current law Sue gets half of her husband's social security. Mary gets none of her husband's simply because she is receiving a government pension, despite the fact her husband paid into the SS fund just like Sue's husband.

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They do it this way because if both people only have social security, the surviving spouse only gets to draw the highest of the two. I don't believe this bill does anything about that situation, so the non-covered pensioners are coming out ahead, comparatively speaking.

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She will be able to collect Widows benefits if she is eligible. But she if she never paid into SS she would not just get SS.

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Disability, potentially yes, she could just get it. Otherwise one cannot qualify for ss benefit if they never paid in.

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Do you realize that a spouse that has never worked at an income paying job is eligible to collect 1/2 of the working spouses SS?? Yes, people who never directly contributed do receive SS benefits and always have. SS was initially setup to account for that.

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This is incorrect; a survivor doesn't just automatically get 1/2 of their deceased spouse's benefit. They look at both and will basically give the survivor the highest of the two. If the survivor's was higher, they don't get anything of the deceased. If deceased was higher, the survivor's gets the difference between theirs and their spouse's; i.e. they get increased up to the higher deceased's benefit.