Caught between pension plans, some retirees see less Social Security

• Al Nelson proudly served the United States as a soldier for 20 years.
• "I don't think so," said Nelson, who is urging President Bush, Congress and anyone else involved in shaping public policy to correct what many people say is a fundamental inequity in the nation's pension system.
• Nelson is one of perhaps 700,000 people whose retirement incomes are tangled in red tape that was intended in the 1980s to align public-service pensions more closely with Social Security.
• The remaining jobs are predominantly teachers, firefighters, police officers and other government workers whose employers opted out of Social Security coverage.
• Employees or retirees in the Civil Service Retirement System instead of the newer Federal Employees Retirement System.
• Contact your U.S. senator or House member to make your views known.
• By 1982, federal lawmakers were working to narrow the differences and to relieve budget pressures on the retirement system by switching more government workers into Social Security-covered plans.
• The first tool was the government-pension offset, or GPO, which reduces a widowed spouse's potential Social Security benefits by two-thirds if the partner received pension payments from a non-Social Security plan.
• The second was the windfall-elimination provision, or WEP, which uses a formula to cut Social Security pension benefits by about 40 percent for retirees who also get pension checks from a non-Social Security plan.
• Retirees such as Nelson, and groups such as the National Education Association, the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, and the AFL-CIO's American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees want the WEP and GPO repealed.
• Plus, repealing the provisions would be a major change that would be more appropriate to consider along with other changes under discussion for strengthening and protecting the system, Barnhart said.