As the 118th Congress wrapped up business, with a primary focus on funding the federal government until March 2025, it passed the misnamed Social Security Fairness Act, a huge Christmas present to 2.4 million retired public employees.
I hope Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaire partners of President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed presidential advisory commission, the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, were paying attention. Congress’s bipartisan irresponsibility, which further accelerates Social Security’s plunge into insolvency, has serious implications for DOGE’s mission.
Let’s unpack the Social Security Fairness Act. Forty-one years ago, when President Ronald Reagan and bipartisan congressional leaders were racing to keep Social Security solvent, they sought to include public employees in the system. Federal and other public employees paying into generous public pension programs were exempt from Social Security, and their advocates wanted to keep it that way.
So Congress came up with a compromise. State and local public employees could remain exempt from making Social Security contributions. Still, they would be subject to a “Windfall Exemption” (as well as a “Government Pension Offset”) that would reduce any future Social Security benefits from a second job or a second career where they contributed to the system.
The grumbling began right away. Retired public employees who worked a second career before or afterward started pushing for equitable status with those of us who paid into the system our entire career. Demanding “fairness,” they finally won bipartisan support to eliminate the Windfall Exemption and Government Pension Offset.
The problem is that Social Security has always been an income transfer program. It’s not a savings plan. There’s no “account” with your name on it. You pay in or paid in to subsidize retirees with a promise that you’d qualify when your time came to collect benefits. But thanks to outgoing Congresswoman and 2025 Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), U.S. Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) and others, Congress sent the Social Security Fairness Act to Joe Biden’s desk by veto-proof margins.
While North Carolina’s U.S. senators voted no, its U.S. House delegation voted 8-5 in support, with one not voting.
This should be a wake-up call for DOGE. It is a reminder that Congress is more attuned to showering money on favored groups than in fiscal responsibility in the face of trillion-dollar annual payments to service our $36 trillion federal debt. That’s more for debt service than we pay to defend our nation and its interests.
Musk and Ramaswamy, along with incoming Office and Management Director Russell Vought, should include giving DOGE “BRAC-like” powers in the president’s proposed budget to make their plans to make government more efficient a reality.
“BRAC-like” refers to the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Act of 1990.
It provided an expedited up-or-down framework to get the transfer and disposal of military installations through Congress free of pork-barrel politics. It has been utilized five times, most recently in 2005, when nearly three dozen significant installations were closed or transferred to other states. In that case, under a 1990 law, Congress had 45 days to cast an up or down vote on the entire list of closures — no deal-making to keep obsolete or unnecessary installations open. It worked as Congress failed to overturn the commission’s recommendations.
The new 119th Republican-controlled Congress will move quickly on a budget resolution that includes at least one “reconciliation” bill to implement its spending and tax provisions. Under the 1974 Budget Act, such bills are limited by subject matter (no “policy” matters but only appropriations and taxation) but also feature limits on debate and amendment, germaneness requirements, and exemption from the Senate’s supermajority “filibuster” threshold.
In other words, a unified Republican Congress doesn’t need Democratic votes to adopt a budget or reconciliation bill. And giving DOGE BRAC-like authorities limited to recommending spending reductions and other efficiencies should be included.
After all, this process is how we got Obamacare in 2010.
Giving DOGE BRAC-like powers is the only way meaningful spending reforms will make their way through a Congress bent on spending money. Musk and Ramaswamy may not want to serve as “commissioners,” but they may not need to. Budget writers in Congress have flexibility on how they can comprise the process, so long as it includes up-or-down, take-it-all-or-leave-it-all expedited consideration in Congress.
Otherwise, as a purely presidential advisory process, its recommendations will be subject to the tender mercies of agency heads and congressional appropriators. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist like Musk to figure out how that will turn out.
Make DOGE BRAC.
Kelly D. Johnston was the 28th secretary of the United States Senate.
