After mounting pressure in recent weeks, efforts to repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset have gained more traction in the Senate.

During a labor rally Wednesday morning, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer committed to a floor vote on the Social Security Fairness Act, bringing the longstanding legislation another step closer to final passage.

“I’m here to tell you that we are going to call for a vote,” Schumer told participants at the rally that took place in pouring rain near the Capitol building on Wednesday morning. “The Senate will take action on Social Security…I have prepared my Democrats to support this. We need 15 Republicans – let’s get them – and we’ll get the vote. What is happening to you is unfair, un-American and I will fight it with all my might.”

The Social Security Fairness Act has been reintroduced for years and has gained significant momentum in this Congress. For the first time ever, the House of Representatives passed the bill last month by a vote of 327-75. In the weeks since the House passed the bill, advocates and other stakeholders have urged the Senate to put the legislation to a floor vote.

Leaders and members of organizations such as the AFL-CIO, the International Association of Firefighters, the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees attended the rally to urge lawmakers to vote to call for the law to be passed.

“We had a tough fight in the House of Representatives, but with the support of the Republican leadership, “By fighting from the grassroots of our Democrats, we were able to take it to the Senate,” IAFF General President Edward Kelly told rally participants. “Now we have the same fight here and we have to win this fight.”

The story continues in the photo gallery.

The House vote on the bill in November came after Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) and Garrett Graves (R-La.) — the bill’s original co-sponsors — filed a discharge motion to try to pass it To bring the bill to a minimum level vote. It took just over a week for the petition to reach the required 218 votes.

“Despite all odds, despite the fact that no one has been able to get this bill to a vote yet, because of your actions and our actions, we actually got this bill passed the House of Representatives with an overwhelming bipartisan vote,” Graves said at the vote Rally. “That’s exactly what we need to do in the Senate.”

The Senate companion bill currently has 62 bipartisan co-sponsors, enough to overcome a filibuster. But before Schumer’s promise at this week’s rally, there hadn’t been much movement on the legislation. Now the pressure is growing on the Senate side to bring the bill to a vote.

If passed, the Social Security Fairness Act would repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset. The WEP and the GPO reduce and in some cases eliminate social security benefits for civil servants who have also worked for a period of time in a job that pays social security.

WEP and GPO together affect the benefits of nearly 3 million civil servants, as well as their spouses, widows and widowers. Those affected include retirees from the public pension system and other public sector employees such as teachers, firefighters, postal workers and police officers.

John Hatton, staff vice president for policy and programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, said this year’s momentum for legislation was the culmination of years of work.

“We had three different committee hearings this year, but then we just didn’t get the movement we needed,” Hatton told Federal News Network at the rally. “I think Graves’ ability to rally other Republicans around the dismissal motion and get it to a vote led to this success. A ‘sunlight strategy’ of forcing people to go on the record voting instead of holding them in committee just worked.”

There is no indication as to how quickly the bill could pass in the Senate, but NARFE’s Hatton said he is confident a vote could happen sooner rather than later.

“If there are objections to the process, it usually slows things down a bit. But the Senate schedule is harder to predict,” Hatton said. “It was one step that built upon the next, upon the next, and it really took us many years to commit to it.”

The Senate has just weeks left to pass the Social Security Fairness Act before the end of the 118th Congress.

“The final stop is to go to the president’s desk and (we will) finally and fully see a redress of a wrong that has affected so many for so long,” Spanberger said at the rally. “Now we’re going to do it.”

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