Weap and Goop Meet Mr. Rockhead

Years ago I worked with somebody named Rockwood. He was kind of a blow-hard and a bully. He was one of the bosses. One of only a few bad bosses I’ve ever had. Once at an office affair (as in party, not the other kind) I introduced him to my date. The problem was I introduced him as Mr. Rochead, not Mr. Rockwood. Not a good career move.

I think that’s called a Freudian slip.

And it could have been worse. Much worse.

I thought of Rockhead, I mean Rockwood, when a batch of e-mails came in. The subject line on several of them was: Weap and Goop. My freudian slip translator went into action. It was clear they were talking about WEP and GPO (not “weap” and “goop”).

WEP stands for Windfall Elimination Provision and GPO stands for Government Pension Offset. I call them Social Security’s evil twins. Both are formulas enacted by Congress years ago.

The idea was to prevent feds and other public employees who didn’t contribute to Social Security for a full career (say 30 years) from getting what Congress termed as “windfall” benefits, along with their full government pensions. It is one thing to be eligible to collect Social Security benefits (with ten years of service) but it is another to collect full benefits based on paying into Social Security for a relatively short time. Whether you buy that logic or not, it’s the law. WEP can drastically reduce the Social Security benefits of people retiring under the old CSRS system, and other public employees who had minimal service under Social Security.

The GPO is even worse. It can wipe out the spousal or survivor benefit that a CSRS retiree (or other public employee) expected based on their spouse’s Social Security entitlement.

Congress (both Democratic and Republican) has been working for years to reform or eliminate WEP and GPO. For years. Decades. And it hasn’t happened yet. And it isn’t going anywhere this year. No matter how hard federal unions and retirees groups shake the tree, WEP and GPO aren’t going away unless and until Congress finds a way to offset the financial hit the Treasury would take.

Most realists believe that the only way WEP and GPO will go away is if Congress figures out that it doesn’t hit only federal workers. In fact most of the victims are state and local government employees. And school teachers. Especially school teachers. Think about it, even the toughest politician is still probably still afraid of (or grateful for) a particular teacher he or she had in the past. Teachers have clout! And there are a lot more state and local government workers, active and retired, than there are current or former feds.

Here’s word from a non-fed who has felt the wrath of the offset formulas.

WEP and GPO pertain to State of California retirees also. My SS was reduced by 47% and my PERS pension was also reduced. I worked and contributed to SS for more than the 40 required quarters but still had to take the cut because I also had a pension. I know people who served in the military & retired and then worked for the State & retired and then continued to work under SS until retirement age. One should be able to collect from whichever pensions they have contributed to while they were working…….all of them! ” Caryl Cole Apple Valley, California.

Nearly Useless Factoid

The most commonly misspelled word in the English language is “supersede”, according to researchers at the Collins Dictionaries of Britain. UPI reports the company said the word is misspelled one out of every 10 times it is used because many other words with phonetically similar endings — such as intercede and precede — are spelled with the letter “c” instead of “s.” It’s not much of a problem around our office as we’re not really sure what it means anyway.

To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com

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