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In early 2025, during the final weeks of President Joe Biden’s term, lawmakers pushed through a major last-minute bill that would increase Social Security benefits for some public pensioners.
The Social Security Fairness Act was passed by both houses of Congress with bipartisan majorities, and Biden signed it into law on January 5, 2025.
Several senators are now asking the Social Security Administration to reconsider what they say is an implementation flaw in the law that limits retroactive payments to certain beneficiaries to six months instead of one year.
The Social Security Fairness Act repealed two provisions that reduced, or in some cases eliminated, Social Security benefits for individuals who receive pension income from jobs that do not pay Social Security payroll taxes: the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset Provision (GPO). However, these individuals also had other income from work that paid into the program, which made them eligible for benefits.
The law would affect more than 2.8 million people in certain states, including teachers, firefighters and police officers, according to the Social Security Administration. Relatives of affected workers, especially spouses and surviving spouses, also received adjusted benefits under this provision.
The adjustments include new higher monthly benefit payments and retroactive lump sum payments for benefits paid from January 2024 onwards.
The lump sum amount for some beneficiaries will be small
But while the law provides for one year of retroactive payments, some beneficiaries have received only six months of payments, based on the Social Security Administration’s interpretation of the law, several senators wrote to the agency in a Feb. 5 letter. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), John Cornyn (R-Texas), and John Fetterman (Pennsylvania) signed the letter.
Senators previously wrote to the SSA in April 2025 expressing concerns about retroactive spousal benefits under the new law.
In its response to lawmakers, SSA said the six-month limit for new applicants is because the new law does not amend specific language in the Social Security Act, which established the program in 1935.
As a result, the agency says the one-year retroactive benefits will only be available to individuals who were already receiving benefits as of January 2024 or who applied for benefits before that date.
The Social Security Administration had not commented as of press time.
“We do not blame SSA for not having a crystal ball,” Sens. Cassidy, Cornyn, and Fetterman wrote in a Feb. 5 letter.
Because Congress did not know if or when the Social Security Fairness Act would be passed, it “did not distinguish between new and current beneficiaries in setting the law’s effective date,” the senators wrote. Similarly, the authorities could not have predicted the changes that were implemented, they wrote.
The Social Security Administration should follow the “plain text” of the Social Security Fairness Act and provide all applicants with a one-year lookback date starting in January 2024, regardless of the date they applied for benefits, the senators wrote.
“The law that was passed is absolutely clear…it says 12 months,” said Max Lichtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
Lichtman, who attended Biden’s signing of the bill, said the advocacy group National Committee has been working to change the Social Security Fairness Act for decades.
After the law went into effect, millions of Social Security recipients saw their payments increase.
“The biggest difference is for public servants who didn’t earn as much, such as bus drivers, cafeteria workers, sheriff’s deputies and policy officers,” Cassidy said in an emailed statement. “Restoring benefits has restored my ability to live comfortably in retirement.”
