OMG, it is obvious many people commenting here have no clue what they are talking about. The WEP and GPO are NOT giving people money from Social Security that they did not earn.

The WEP and GPO are government pensions (Federal or state) that did NOT pay into Social Security. These same people may have also worked at least 40 quarters (10 years) in a job that they PAID INTO Social Security. Many of the government pensions were for police and firefighters.

The government in it's infinite wisdom decided they didn't deserve to collect their Social Security when they retired (or became disabled) because they were being unjustly enriched. How paying into a pension system, either from government or state service and then working in another job and becoming eligible for a pension was unjustly enriching the person I'll never understand.

And for reference, many of the Social Security pensions were not for very much money because the majority of the people worked the majority of their careers in their government job.

So in essence the WEP and GPO are telling a group of people "you can't collect your little Social Security pension because you already have a bigger pension that you didn't pay social security into."