The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is seeking information from public pension plans as part of its effort to judge the feasibility of a proposed windfall elimination provision (WEP) reform bill.

WEP cuts the Social Security retirement benefits that can be received by retirees who are eligible for them in addition to pensions from jobs that were not covered by the program and it does so by using a blunt formula that does not change until a worker accumulates more than 20 years of covered employment. The bill, H.R. 4391 from Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, would replace WEP with a formula that would more accurately account for an individual's level of participation in Social Security. If the measure were to become law, the Social Security Administration (SSA) would need to have information about the earnings history of all people who worked in jobs outside of Social Security, information that the agency has only back to 1978. SSA would have to get pre-1978 information from public pension plans and CBO is trying to determine if that would be possible.