White House says looking to resolve lack of Social Security increase
Oct 15 President Barack Obama is concerned about the "unintended" consequence of a Social Security formula that will keep nearly 65 million older Americans from getting an increase in their benefits next year, the White House said on Thursday.
"The president is aware of this, frankly, unintended policy consequence resulting from the formula for calculating cost-of-living adjustments," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. "There have been discussions that the administration has had with members of Congress about this issue and about our interest in trying to resolve it."
Earnest said that to allow members of Congress to negotiate the U.S. budget in private he would not publicly give details on discussions about changing the formula for increases, which is linked to an inflation measure that currently shows consumer prices are flat.
My bold.
Consumer prices are flat?
Someone needs to get out of their Ivory Tower and go grocery shopping for a family of four tomorrow,
just because gas prices have come down doesn't mean anything else has.
I would recommend that Congress put this a little higher on their To Do list, there are elections coming and pissing off the Gray Hairs is not a great strategy for re electing incumbents.
4 comments:
IIRC, food prices were one of the things they took out of the "formula" used to calculate cost of living/inflation.
One thing I've noticed is that a lot of packages are the same size, but instead of getting 8 ounces of product, you now get 6 or 7-1/2.
Neither congress nor the white house really gives a shit.
Bob
III
drjim is correct.
Food and energy prices are not counted in the formula used to measure inflation. Since most people spend the majority of their non-housing income on food and energy, I don't know what they count (Soap? Shoes? Lap dances?), but that's the way they do it.
The numbers mean what they want them to mean. Figures can lie and liars can figure.
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