Welcome to today's hearing about the Government Pension Offset in the Social Security program. Many government workers do not pay into the Social Security system. However, they may be entitled to spousal benefits from Social Security if their husbands or wives paid into the system. When planning for retirement, many of these workers count on their government pension and their full Social Security spousal benefit.
Many people wonder how such a provision ever made it into the law.
The reason is because Social Security spousal benefits were created in 1939 to help homemakers who didn't have pensions of their own. In essence, spousal benefits are designed to help people who are financially dependent on their husbands or wives. As a result, married people who work in Social Security-covered jobs do not receive full spousal benefits. In contrast, before the GPO, government workers could receive full spousal benefits even though they also received pensions from their government jobs. The GPO was created in 1977 to try to level the playing field.