General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsChained CPI Imposes Painful Social Security Benefit Cuts and a Benefit Bump-Up Provides Only Limited
he National Womens Law Center has released a new report, Chained CPI Imposes Painful Social Security Benefit Cuts and a Benefit Bump-Up Provides Only Limited Relief, available here: http://www.nwlc.org/resource/chained-cpi-imposes-painful-social-security-benefit-cuts-and-benefit-bump-provides-only-lim. It analyzes how effective the 20-year benefit bump-up proposed in the Bowles-Simpson report would be in protecting vulnerable beneficiaries from the impact of switching to the chained CPI. (NWLCs other materials and infographics about the chained CPI are available here: http://www.nwlc.org/chained-cpi-what-it-and-what-it-means-women.)
NWLCs new analysis finds that for the typical single elderly woman a woman whose initial benefit is $1,100 per month, the median benefit for single women 65 and older:
The cut from the chained CPI would reduce her monthly benefits by an amount equal to the cost of one weeks worth of food each month at age 80. She would still have two years to wait before receiving any help from the bump-up.
The Bowles-Simpson bump-up would restore her monthly benefits to current-law levels for only two years and then her benefits would fall behind again.
By age 95, the cut in her benefits would equal the cost of three days worth of food each month.
The report also explains that the bump-up would provide no relief to most of the poorest elders who rely on Supplemental Security Income (SSI). SSI beneficiaries would get a double hit from the chained CPI, because it is used to adjust both the initial benefit level and subsequent benefits. But every additional $1 in Social Security benefits reduces SSI benefits by $1 so a small increase from the bump-up would provide no additional income to most SSI beneficiaries. And some SSI beneficiaries could be even worse off, if the bump-up in their Social Security benefits pushed them slightly above the SSI eligibility threshold and they lost automatic Medicaid eligibility.
People disabled at an early age also would be severely impacted by the chained CPI. The Bowles-Simpson 20-year bump-up would apply to recipients of disability benefits, starting 20 years after the disability determination. But some proposals for a birthday bump-up, such as the proposal in the Rivlin-Domenici deficit reduction plan, would provide no help to recipients of disability benefits.
Joan Entmacher
Vice President for Family Economic Security
eridani
(51,907 posts)This is unconscionable! Social Security does NOT contribute to the deficit!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-boehner-meet-as-debt-talks-intensify/2012/12/17/6b43c24a-4868-11e2-b6f0-e851e741d196_story.html
In pursuit of a compromise, President Obama has offered to slow the growth of Social Security benefits and lowered his demand for new taxes, according to a person familiar with the talks.
But Obama's counteroffer to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) seeks additional stimulus spending and a two-year extension of the federal debt limit, which Republicans have so far opposed.
Read more at:
duffyduff
(3,251 posts)No way should "austerity" be forced on those who didn't create the economic mess in the first place.
TheKentuckian
(25,026 posts)and one day it will be most of us no matter how carefully laid your sandcastles may be, look at the reality not your own little personal exceptionalism.