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Liberal groups protest Obama’s Social Security plan
Angry over anticipated changes to Social Security in President Obama’s budget, liberal lawmakers, unions and groups representing retired Americans protested outside the White House on Tuesday, one day ahead of the the budget’s scheduled release. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who…
Refiguring Inflation Will Hit Retirees’ Income
Earlier this month, President Barack Obama proposed to tweak the formula for calculating the cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for Social Security recipients. He wants to tie the adjustment to what’s called the Chained Consumer Price Index, which many believe is…
With Tax Effects, Chained CPI Draws Coalition of Opposition
When the Obama administration included in its fiscal 2014 budget proposal a plan that would effectively reduce Social Security benefits over the years, officials braced for a strong backlash from Democrats and other defenders of the entitlement program. The White House…
Budget Negotiating Chip Has Big Downside for Old and Poor
President Obama has put Social Security on the table in an attempt to reach a bipartisan agreement on the federal budget deficit, a move that would hit the program’s beneficiaries when they are at their most vulnerable. The president has proposed slowing the rate at…
Judges sue Social Security over case ‘quotas’
WASHINGTON—Judges struggling to handle a surge of disability cases sometimes award benefits they might otherwise deny in order to clear cases faster so they can meet quotas imposed by the Social Security Administration, according to a lawsuit filed by the…
Will Obama’s Chained CPI Help Keep Inflation From Eating Into Your Savings?
This week we examine ways in which inflation nibbles away at your retirement income, especially in light of the President’s proposal for Chained CPI adjustments to Social Security. The formal title is Chain-weighted Consumer Price Index and it’s a variation of how the government…
Why the ‘Spreadsheet Scandal’ Should Kill Obama’s Social Security Cut
A recent “Spreadsheet Scandal” has rocked the economics world. It also seems to have eliminated the last remaining technical argument in support of the president’s “chained CPI” Social Security cut. Not weakened it. Eliminated it. I believe the president proposed the chained CPI in…
Hit to Social Security benefits of using chained CPI? Average of $30/month, says CBO
f you’ve been wondering what using the so-called “chained CPI” would do to Social Security benefits, the Congressional Budget Office has an answer for you: they’d be about $30 a month lower, on average, by 2023. That’s if the chained CPI…
How would ‘Chained CPI’ affect your benefits?
A House Ways and Means subcommittee on Wednesday held a hearing to examine the impacts of using “Chained CPI” to slow the growth in entitlement spending and increase tax revenue. President Obama has put Chained CPI on the table as part of his proposal…
Don’t Raise or Eliminate the Cap
Under Roosevelt’s original design for Social Security, high earners wouldn’t even have participated. The eventual legislation included the rich, but with a contribution cap to distinguish Social Security from “the dole.” As a Social Security Administration report put it, “The upper limit on the tax…