A bipartisan bill to change the rules for Social Security benefits for retirees passed the House of Representatives on Tuesday, with 327 lawmakers voting in favor of the measure.

Now the proposal heads to the Senate, where the House version of the bill has 62 co-sponsors, “exceeding the majority needed to pass the bill in the U.S. Senate and send it to the President’s desk to to be signed into law.” Reps. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., and Garret Graves, R-La., co-leaders of the bill, said in a joint statement.

The proposal – called the Social Security Fairness Act – would repeal rules that reduce Social Security benefits for individuals who receive retirement benefits from state or local governments.

It would eliminate the windfall elimination provision, or WEP, which reduces Social Security benefits for individuals who worked in jobs where they paid no Social Security taxes and now receive retirement or disability benefits from those employers. According to the Congressional Research Service, approximately 3% of all Social Security beneficiaries – approximately 2.1 million people – were affected by the WEP as of December 2023.

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The bill would also eliminate the Public Pension Offset (GPO), which reduces Social Security benefits for spouses, widows and widowers who also receive pension checks. According to the Congressional Research Service, about 1% of all Social Security beneficiaries – or 745,679 individuals – were affected by the GPO in December.

These rules, which have been in place for decades, reduce the incomes of certain retired police officers, teachers, firefighters and other public servants, Graves said during a speech on the House floor on Tuesday.

“This is 40 years of people being treated differently and a certain group of employees being discriminated against,” Graves said.

“It’s not people who are paid too much; it’s not people who work too little either,” he said.

The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare said the House vote on the Social Security Fairness Act is a “step in the right direction” and a “bipartisan victory for public sector workers and their families .”

“We have long advocated the repeal of the WEP and GPO provisions, Although we would have preferred that Congress implement the more comprehensive improvements in Rep.’s Social Security 2100 Act. John Larson would take over,” Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said in a statement.

Larson’s proposal, which has 188 House cosponsors, would also repeal the WEP and GPO, while making other temporary benefit increases. To help pay for these changes, people with incomes over $400,000 would have to pay more Social Security taxes.

On Tuesday, Larson voted against the Social Security Fairness Act, as well as another bill, the Equal Treatment of Public Servants Act. This latest bill would use a new formula for Social Security retirement and disability benefits for retirees instead of eliminating the WEP. It wouldn’t change the GPO.

The bill, proposed by Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, failed when it was put to a vote.

“I could not vote for the bills before us tonight because they go unfunded and endanger Americans’ hard-earned benefits,” Larson said in a statement. “It would most deeply affect the five million of our fellow Americans who fall below the poverty line, and nearly half of all Social Security recipients who rely on earned benefits for the majority of their income.”

The Social Security Fairness Act would increase deficits by an estimated $196 billion over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. It would also bring Social Security trust fund depletion dates closer by an estimated six months, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

“The long-term solvency of Social Security is an issue that Congress must address,” Spanberger said in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.

“But that’s separate from allowing Americans who have done their part, who have contributed their earnings, to retire with dignity,” she said.

Critics, however, say Social Security’s funding problems should now be a priority for Congress. The program’s actuaries predict that the trust fund used to pay retirement benefits will be depleted by 2033, at which point 79% of benefits will be payable.

“This is not the right policy,” said Romina Boccia, director of budget and rights policy at the Cato Institute. “It is what special interests are pushing for, and politicians are responding to their demands.”

While Arrington’s proposed alternative bill would not address the GPO, it would provide a “fairer formula” for the WEP, Boccia said. However, broader changes are needed to support the programme’s finances.

“We must reform Social Security so that it provides basic income security to the most vulnerable Americans in old age, without increasing the debt or tax burden that younger workers face,” Boccia said.