Long-Term Effects of H.R. 82, the Social Security Fairness Act of 2023

The Congressional Budget Office was asked to provide information about how enacting H.R. 82, the Social Security Fairness Act of 2023, would affect the finances of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund and the finances of that fund combined with the Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund over the next 75 years, 2024 to 2098.

H.R. 82 would eliminate the windfall elimination provision (WEP) and the government pension offset (GPO). The WEP reduces benefits for retired or disabled workers who have fewer than 30 years of significant earnings from employment covered by Social Security if they also receive pensions on the basis of noncovered employment. The GPO reduces the spousal or surviving spousal benefits of people who receive pensions on the basis of noncovered employment.

CBO’s analysis shows that the elimination of the WEP and GPO, as specified in H.R. 82, would permanently increase outlays for scheduled Social Security benefits—that is, the amounts that the program would pay if it continued to pay benefits as scheduled under current law, regardless of whether the program’s two trust funds had sufficient balances to cover those payments. That increase in Social Security benefits would drive the program’s spending even further above its revenues than it is already projected to be under current law.

CBO also estimated the effects of H.R. 82 on payable Social Security benefits. Payable benefits are the benefits that the program could provide if its outlays were limited to the amounts that could be funded by its annual revenues after the exhaustion of the trust fund balances.