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Nevertheless, when trying on the historical past of Social Safety COLAs, utilizing CPI-E would not at all times have resulted in a bigger profit improve. In 2021, for instance, the COLA with CPI-E would have been 4.8% as a substitute of 5.9%, retirement researcher Alicia Munnell identified in a 2022 interview.
One other Social Safety professional, Marcia Mantell, has written that the CPI-E doesn’t replicate the hundreds of thousands of Social Safety beneficiaries who’re youthful than 62, together with individuals with disabilities, surviving spouses and their youngsters.
Social Safety Advocates Weigh In
The Nationwide Committee to Protect Social Safety and Medicare has endorsed Casey’s invoice.
“Whereas Social Safety COLA’s have been respectable through the previous two years, there have been occasions prior to now decade when the COLA was as little as 1.3% and ZERO p.c,” Max Richtman, president and CEO of the Nationwide Committee to Protect Social Safety and Medicare, informed ThinkAdvisor Thursday in an e mail. “Seniors want wholesome COLAs so as to sustain with the impression of inflation on their fundamental dwelling prices, particularly for the reason that common Social Safety profit is already fairly modest.”
Nancy Altman, president of Social Safety Works, which additionally endorsed the invoice, mentioned in one other e mail Thursday that Social Safety’s annual COLA “is amongst its most vital options. However advantages are slowly eroding as a result of the COLA relies on a components, the CPI-W, that under-measures well being care prices and different bills Social Safety beneficiaries face.”
The Boosting Advantages and COLAs for Seniors Act “would repair this by incorporating a extra correct components, the CPI-E, which relies on the particular bills of seniors quite than employees,” Altman relayed. “We commend Sen. Casey and his colleagues for this laws and urge Congress to move it swiftly, both by itself or as a part of a complete Social Safety growth invoice.”
Altman added that whereas Social Safety laws is unlikely to move in 2024, President Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress “are operating for re-election on a platform of increasing Social Safety, paid for by the ultra-wealthy. In the event that they win, then we expect actual progress can and might be made in 2025.”
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