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Search Terms: Government Pension Offset, House or Senate or Joint

Document 9 of 26.

June 27, 2000, Tuesday

SECTION: PREPARED TESTIMONY

LENGTH: 651 words

HEADLINE: PREPARED TESTIMONY OF RUTH PICKARD

BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS SUBCOMMITTEE ON SOCIAL SECURITY

SUBJECT - SOCIAL SECURITY "GOVERNMENT PENSION OFFSET"

BODY:
Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, I am Ruth Pickard, a 73 year old working woman from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to personally ask you to give early and serious consideration to ways and means of alleviating the dire financial consequences of the Government Pension Offset provision (GPO) of the Social Security Act.

The GPO has drastically curtailed my retirement income and that of thousands of others. We are being denied social security benefits not because we have never worked, but because we spent all or some of our working years in public service. Now we find that our government work has eroded the retirement income we had counted on from years of Social Security taxes we and our spouses paid over a lifetime. I went to work in 1943 at age 16 and left the workforce in 1957 to stay home with two young children for 7 years. All of my early years of employment were in the private sector.

In 1963 1 went back to work, this time for the U.S. Postal Service where I paid into Social Security until 1967, when I became covered by the Civil Service Retirement System. In the late 1960's, I developed high blood pressure, and then in 19861 suffered a brain aneurysm. Fortunately, I had more than enough sick and annual leave to cover about 5 months of recuperation. Despite health problems, I returned to work for the Post Office until I retired in November 1990 at age 63.

When I applied for Social Security based on my own work, I found my benefits reduced considerably, to $112, because of the Windfall Elimination Provision of the Social Security Act. And although I was then divorced after more than 20 years of marriage, and was entitled to an additional $248 in wife's benefits, I was informed by Social Security that "we cannot pay you" because two-thirds of my federal annuity was more than the wife's benefits I might otherwise have had. That was the Government Pension Offset. That was the second time my government service reduced my social security.

I soon realized that I could not make ends meet on my federal annuity and my small social security check, so six and a half years ago I went back to work part time. I am still working, and I still have social security taxes withheld from each paycheck.

Today, after 46 years of work--22 years under Social Security and 24 years of Civil Service--I have a monthly retirement income of $1245-- $1071 of government annuity and $171 of social security. And, I am paying about $50 a month in social security payroll taxes, with little hope of my benefits increasing in the future unless the Government Pension Offset is radically reformed or repealed.Mr. Chairman, as one of your own constituents, I greatly appreciate you scheduling this heating to consider the purpose and impact of the GPO, along with ways to modify it.

I hope you will give serious consideration to Congressman Jefferson's bill, which has been found worthy of support by more than half your colleagues in the House of Representatives. But I particularly hope that you and all of your colleagues will remember that the GPO is not just another confusing concept of the Social Security Act. Nor is it simply a safeguard against individuals getting more than "their fair share" from social security.

The GPO is a provision of the Social Security law, which has denied benefits to hundreds of hard-working elderly constituents in each of your states and districts. Unless you and your fellow members of Congress change this law, retirement security will be difficult, if not impossible for many women like me. I commend you all for voting to repeal the Social Security earnings test so that seniors can afford to work. I ask you now to give equal consideration to the GPO, so that others of us can afford to retire.

Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you today.

END

LOAD-DATE: June 28, 2000

Document 9 of 26.


Search Terms: Government Pension Offset, House or Senate or Joint
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