This year’s Social Security Fairness Act represents the largest change to Social Security in decades, increasing benefits for 3 million government retirees at a cost of $190 billion over 10 years. But the chaotic process that brought the bill to fruition, and the failure of Congress to sufficiently fund the administrative costs of the new law, have placed a heavy burden on the already-struggling Social Security Administration.

Indeed, the SSFA contained what was likely a technical error — and one that has made the implementation of the new law very difficult.

The effective date of the legislation was never updated during the two years of the 118th Congress. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tried to move the date forward in the closing hours of the 118th Congress, but time ran out. As a result, the Social Security Administration has had to retroactively entitle millions of individuals to benefits for a period that actually predates the enactment of the legislation.

The start-up administrative costs of the Social Security Fairness Act are plausibly about $200 million. When Congress was

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