The advocacy group Social Security Works estimates that a person age 75 in the future will get a yearly benefit that’s $653 lower after ten years of chained CPI than that person would get under the current formula. An 85-year-old will have $1,139 less to live on. While this doesn’t seem like a princely sum to an investment banker, it is to the very old.
(See the chart below; click to enlarge).
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Speaking to a group of journalists this week at Columbia University, Sherry Glied, a professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, pointed out that “the ‘older old’ outlive their assets and need long-term care and home care.” Public policy has to work for these groups, she said, and she urged reporters to look at how various prescriptions to fix the deficit affect the different groups of the elderly who have different needs and financial assets.
The ‘younger elderly’—the 66 and 67-year-olds—may be okay financially for the time being, since the chained CPI won’t substantially affect them for years, and they have not outlived their assets. That makes it easier medicine for policy makers to swallow.
Some chained CPI advocates believe that the very old—the ones WaPo calls “those who are well into their 80s,” could receive “a modest lump sum” to help them over their financial hump. The Simpson-Bowles blueprint proposed that those in this age group receive a small increase after they’ve been getting Social Security checks for 20 years.
Will this be enough? Who knows? In theory, it sounds like it solves a problem. In practice, it may not. Imagine 85 year olds barely able to walk having to show up at a Social Security office clutching financial documents, along with the light bill, to prove they are poor enough for the modest lump sum! Opponents argue that’s not what Social Security is about, and the media are beginning to report on that side effect.
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Can people afford to lose their Social Security COLA?
NO ONE should be surprised by this G.O.P. congressional maneuvering, they are experts at sleight of hand. Their ONLY concern is padding the wealthy from having to be taxed at a fair rate, not with aiding the middle class or the elderly.
#1 Posted by Jerrie, CJR on Tue 18 Dec 2012 at 03:41 PM
The ' Chained CPI ', will put Senior Citizens, into ' Health Deprived Prisons '.
The President & Congress, should not change the ' Medicare & Social Security ', promise made to Senior Citizens. They have worked hard for it and have PAID into the FUND, like any other Insurance plan.
Taxes should be increased, on income above $ 250,000
The rich can afford to pay more in taxes, but Middle Class Senior Citizens, cannot afford to lose, even a few Dollars, a year. They are barely able to survive, even now.
#2 Posted by Akbar Matadar, CJR on Tue 18 Dec 2012 at 10:02 PM
Chained CPI should be chained to Obama and the minority leader. Had I known he was going to choose this direction he would not have gotten my vote. I did a lot for the President and I am in shock. That this is where he chooses to change benefits As for the minority leader where is her head. We cannot afford these future cuts to those of us who have worked so hard and lost so much, that our thanks is to steal from our aging seniors. Shame on our leaders and any democrats who vote for this
#3 Posted by holidaypro, CJR on Wed 19 Dec 2012 at 12:37 AM
Digby's has been doing some work on this:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/bumping-up-to-premium-catfood.html
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/fiscal-cliff-notes-1218.html
It is a tragedy that the body politic is comprised of people who do not care about the American constituency.
There are neo-liberals, neo-conservatives, social-conservatives, libertarians, third way blue dogs, etc.. But the poor? No one from their ranks gets a voice. The small groups of people that speak for them are marginalized as bleeding heart, know nothings - they aren't serious. Cont..
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 19 Dec 2012 at 03:27 PM
And the question that needs asking is 'Why? Why is it that the people who represent the 99% American constituency are small and marginalized in the body politic?
Brad Delong has a post on the passing of Robert Bork in which Bork and Kennedy discuss the poll tax.
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/12/robert-bork-has-died-rip.html
"KENNEDY: Well, it was not only on the basis of race. It was also on the question of discrimination against the poor. I remember very well, because I offered that amendment on the Voting Rights Act. I suppose the question is, how high a price should a poor person have to be able to pay to exercise the fundamental right to vote. You and I may not have to worry about where each dollar goes but there are a lot of Americans who do. To suggest that a poll tax, if it is small enough, does not deprive a poor person of a fundamental aspect of citizenship, well that reminds me of Anatole France's famous remark that "the law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges and to beg in the streets and to steal bread."
The oath every judge and justice takes requires them to do equal right to the poor as well as to the rich."
There is no longer have a poll tax on the vote - though the conservatives plan to marginalize certain votes in other ways - but we have a 'poll tax' on the process of representation. You cannot be poor and unconnected to rich funders and expect electoral success. Your ideas don't matter. If you are poor, it doesn't matter how much 99% of the people prefer your approach and connect with your ideas, you are out of the running. You are unserious because, if you were serious, you'd have money.
The exceptions are small and marginal. The system is designed to reflect the interests of the wealthy.
We have to not only be prepared to fight the system as it takes away more from us to give to those who've paid 'the poll tax', we have to change the system so that there is no poll tax.
The electoral poll tax is an anethema to a representative republic and its democratic process. Much of the limits of our current political process are rooted in this poll tax we've come to accept. It is a tax to tamper with our representation as much as poll taxes in the past tampered with our franchise. It is time we sent that tax to the ash bin of history, much like what was done with its precedent.
#5 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 19 Dec 2012 at 03:53 PM