{"id":3127,"date":"2010-10-16T04:24:44","date_gmt":"2010-10-16T11:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3127"},"modified":"2010-10-16T04:24:44","modified_gmt":"2010-10-16T11:24:44","slug":"ive-got-the-no-cola-blues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/10\/16\/ive-got-the-no-cola-blues\/","title":{"rendered":"I’ve Got the No COLA Blues"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the second year in a row there will be no COLA increase for Social Security recipients.  My cost of living has gone up.  In the last two years, my rent has increased 9.1%.  My Medicare Advantage plan has increased 15.4%.  My bus pass has increased 30%.  My grocery store expense has increased 23.9%.  I\u2019ve heard rumblings that the Obama administration is cooking the books, but that\u2019s not true.  The COLA is based on the CPI.  If the CPI goes down, Social Security benefits do not decrease.  They stay the came until the CPI catches up and increases again.  That\u2019s what has happened. The CPI took a nosedive in late 2008 and early 2009, because home prices collapsed due to the Republican recession.  It is still below where it was when Social Security Recipients received a COLA for 2009.  It has stayed lower for several reasons.  Housing prices remain depressed.  People are buying more inferior merchandise from abroad that costs less.  Fed fiscal policy is set to keep the dollar artificially low to benefit banksters.  According to Bloomberg, the $US has dropped to a 15 year low against the yen<\/a>.<\/font><\/p>\n

\"16InflationJuly2010\" <\/p>\n

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President Obama will press Congress to send a one-time payment of $250 to senior citizens to help them get through another year without an increase in their Social Security benefits, White House officials said Friday<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The renewed call for those payments came shortly after the Social Security Administration announced that millions of retirees and disabled workers would see no cost-of-living adjustments for the second year in a row, a result of the low U.S. inflation rate.<\/p>\n

Yet seniors are struggling through the current economic downturn, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Friday, and they can’t rely on their savings because of poor investment earnings. <\/p>\n

The $250 Economic Recovery Payment would be akin to a similar benefit paid out by the federal government last year. That payment helped offset last year’s static Social Security rate for about 50 million recipients, according to the White House.<\/p>\n

The idea met with support from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who says the House will vote in November on a measure to provide the payments to Social Security recipients<\/strong>. News about the Social Security rate is just the latest piece of bad economic news \u2014 not just for seniors but for Democrats trying to keep their majorities in next month’s midterm election.<\/p>\n

But the plan faces opposition in the Senate<\/strong>, which defeated a similar measure last year, and among Republicans concerned about long-term funding of the Social Security system.<\/p>\n

"It will be difficult for many seniors to deal with the lack of a COLA [cost of living adjustment] for a second year in a row, but that will pale in comparison to the actual hardships future Social Security recipients will experience if Congress continues to ignore the program’s underlying financial problems," said Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. "We must put Social Security on a path to long-term solvency, and the sooner we do so, the better it will be for both taxpayers and beneficiaries alike."<\/p>\n

Every year, the government automatically adjusts Social Security payments based on the nation’s inflation rate. For an increase in payments to occur, consumer prices must be higher than when the last increase was awarded, according to the Social Security Administration<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <LA Times<\/a>><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The $250 would help.  It will almost cover my rent increase of Republicans don\u2019t block it.  Isn\u2019t it hypocritical that Republicans want to give the average rich person a new Mercedes, but would deny the cost of a muffler to America\u2019s seniors?<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the second year in a row there will be no COLA increase for Social Security recipients.  My cost of living has gone up.  In the last two years, my rent has increased 9.1%.  My Medicare Advantage plan has increased 15.4%.  My bus pass has increased 30%.  My grocery store expense has increased 23.9%.  I\u2019ve […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-politics","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}