Statement of Don LeCompte, Chula Vista, California

It was the shock of a lifetime when the Social Security counselor told  me that, contrary to my years of understanding, my retirement benefits would be reduced to a pittance of what I had been promised.  It was explained that, because I am involuntarily part of the State Teachers’ Retirement System, I fall under the cruelly titled, “Windfall Elimination Provision.”   (Up to this point the word windfall has meant to me some serendipitous, unmerited economic bonus.)

My situation is that I spent the first half of my work life, following my four year enlistment in the Air Force, in the field of business, working for IBM, Xerox and Standard Oil.  When I felt the call to  become a business and social science teacher my wife was working as a modestly paid elementary teacher herself and we had two young children.  I traded in my stock options for a college education.  When I earned my credential and entered the field of education I was fully vested in the Social Security System.

I happily spent the second half of my work life serving my students and their families and contributing to STRS.  I have seen many of my students become entrepreneurs, business leaders, lawyers and solid citizens.  I have always taught them of the benefits of active citizenship and self-determination.

Imagine my surprise at age 65 when I discovered that my years in the world of business and my years in the service of education would collide to cost me the retirement benefit I had consistently been informed I could expect.

My wife, by the way, has worked her entire adult life as a teacher and only earned 29 quarters of Social Security while putting herself through school.  She has been cut off from the benefit she should have derived through our 45 year marriage because of the Government Pension Offset.  Our question would have to be, “Offsetting what and for whose benefit?”

In the future we will have need for great numbers of new teachers; some are predicting a shortage of crisis proportions.   Hopefully a balance will be drawn from among mature people attracted as I was from other fields of endeavor.  If we expect our educational system to keep pace with ever-increasing demands, we must attract the best.  How can we ask people of talent and good will to subject themselves to this future folly?

Please vote to repeal the WEP and GPO.