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COLA Announced – Reactions Now Taking Center Stage
Yesterday’s official announcement of a 2.5% Social Security cost-of-living adjustment arrived as expected, along with the also-expected commentary on the inadequacy of the benefit increase. Calling the 2.5% bump a “lost opportunity,” The Senior Citizens League (TSCL) executive director Shannon Benton issued a statement calling for Congress to make improvements in the COLA calculation process via adoption of CPI-E (Consumer Price Index for Americans 62 years of age and older, or R-CPI-E to denote its research status), and further to set a minimum COLA of 3%. Benton’s statement included this note: “Our research shows that 67 percent of seniors depend on Social Security for more than half their income and that 62 percent worry their retirement income won’t even cover essentials like groceries and medical bills.” The TSCL position is explained further in a post by Newsweek Consumer & Social Trends reporter Suzanne Blake, which you can access here.
To learn more about the R-CPI-E methodology, click here.