A few weeks ago, I wrote a column about something called the “government pension offset.” It is a law that essentially says this: If you get a pension from a job that was not covered by Social Security, that pension will be treated just like a Social Security retirement pension and it will be used to offset any benefits you might be due on a spouse’s Social Security record.

There is a companion law called the “windfall elimination provision,” more commonly known by its acronym, WEP, which usually reduces any Social Security retirement benefits earned at side jobs by folks who spent the bulk of their life working at a job that was not covered by Social Security. Most folks impacted by WEP despise the law — until they understand why it exists.

To explain the reason for the law, I’ve got to start by telling you a true story. It’s the story of my neighbor, Frank, and his housekeeper, Maria. They are both 66 years old. Frank is a retired midlevel manager with our local utility company. He gets a high monthly Social Security benefit — about $3,400. Maria is divorced and has worked all her life at low-paying jobs. She continues to work to supplement her meager $1,150 per month Social Security check.

Even though Maria gets a much smaller Social Security benefit than Frank, she might find some comfort in knowing that she is getting a better deal out of the program than he is. Or to put that another way, Maria’s Social Security check represents a higher percentage of her lifetime earnings than Frank’s monthly benefit.

And that has always been one of the basic tenets of the Social Security program: to raise the standard of living of lower-income workers in retirement. That is accomplished via a benefit formula structured to give poor people a better deal than their wealthier counterparts. They don’t get higher benefits. After all, Frank’s monthly Social Security check is much higher than Maria’s. But when comparing the rate of return they get based on their past income and the taxes they paid into the system, Maria comes out ahead.

I don’t have the space to get into the nitty-gritty of the Social Security benefit computation formula in this column today (I’ve done it in many past columns). But in a nutshell, I can tell you that Maria’s $1,150 benefit represents about 90% of her average lifetime monthly wage. Whereas Frank’s $3,400 Social Security check is probably about 40% of his average monthly pre-retirement income.

So, poor people get a rate of return that can be up to 90%. Average-income people get a return rate in the 40% range. Very high-income people might get a roughly 30% rate of return. And knowing that, I can now move on to a further clarification of the windfall elimination provision.

To do that, I will use myself as an example. I spent the bulk of my life working for the federal government. People hired by the government after 1983 pay into Social Security just like most other people. But folks like me hired before then were covered by the civil service retirement system, not Social Security. And now that I am retired, I get a monthly civil service pension. But I spent some time at jobs where I did pay into Social Security — a few years before I got hired by the feds and some more years after I retired. And that includes the compensation I get for writing this column, for which I pay Social Security self-employment taxes.

I currently have about 15 years of Social Security covered employment. And that’s enough to get me a small Social Security check. My Social Security check isn’t breaking the government’s bank — it’s only about $200 per month. And that includes a WEP reduction, which I will explain.

Had my benefit been figured using the regular Social Security formula, I would have received the same 90% rate of return that my neighbor’s maid is getting — and I would have ended up with a much higher (and unintended) Social Security benefit. Why? Because I look like a poor person to the Social Security Administration’s computers. I’ve got only 15 years of covered earnings. The Social Security benefit formula uses a 35-year base. In other words, there are 20 years of “zero” earnings on my Social Security record. That makes me look as poor as Maria and that’s why I’d normally get the same 90% return rate.

But let’s be honest: I’m not poor. I had a decent-paying government job most of my life that isn’t reflected in my Social Security earnings history. So, I shouldn’t get the same rate of return that the system set up for lower income people. Instead, my earnings pattern is much more like my neighbor Frank’s. I should get the same rate of return (about 40%) as Frank gets, and for that matter, as all other average-income Americans get.

And that’s what the windfall elimination provision does. When that WEP formula is applied to my Social Security computation, it gives me the roughly 40% return rate rather than the 90% rate intended for the very poorest of our citizens.

It’s a law that makes perfect sense. Yet it has many teachers, police officers and other public employees who spent most of their working lives in jobs not covered by Social Security, but who, like me, paid into Social Security in side jobs, up in arms. They think they have been singled out for Social Security benefit reductions that just aren’t fair.

But almost all of these folks are not lifetime low-income workers like my neighbor’s housekeeper, Maria. She deserves the 90% return rate that she is getting. But if you are someone who spent your lifetime as a teacher or a police officer, or a federal government employee like me, you are simply not in the same boat as Maria. And you shouldn’t get Maria’s “poor person’s” Social Security return rate. You should get a rate similar to all average-income Americans — about 40%. And that’s what the windfall elimination provision is all about.

One final note on this topic. There are some people who divided their careers between Social Security covered jobs and non-Social Security covered jobs. And the WEP law recognizes that. The more years of Social Security earnings you have, the less the WEP reduction. To learn more about that, get my “Simple and Smart” book listed below and read the chapter on offsets that affect government employees.

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If you have a Social Security question, Tom Margenau has two books with all the answers. One is called “Social Security — Simple and Smart: 10 Easy-to-Understand Fact Sheets That Will Answer All Your Questions About Social Security.” The other is “Social Security: 100 Myths and 100 Facts.” You can find the books at Amazon.com or other book outlets. To find out more about Tom Margenau and to read past columns and see features from other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.