Every two weeks or so, I get a series of email responses from the office of Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) to the various online petitions I've signed. Yesterday, I received a response to a recent petition opposing the adoption of chained CPI for calculating Social Security because such a benefit cut would exacerbate the worsening retirement crisis.
Here's the response I got with the most relevant part in bold:
Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding a possible change in the method used to calculate the Social Security cost of living adjustment (COLA). I appreciate hearing from you about this issue.
The cost of living adjustment is a predetermined increase to social security benefits intended to compensate for the effects of inflation. COLAs have been determined by the U.S. Social Security Administration since 1975, and are not decisions in which Congress or the President typically have a role. In general, a COLA is equal to the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) from the third quarter of one year to the third quarter of the next. The CPI-W is a measure of the change in prices paid by consumers for a variety of goods and services. The Bureau of Labor Statistics determines the CPI-W by examining the change in price of over 200 categories of goods and services.
The President’s Fiscal Year 2014 Budget proposes changing this method of calculating COLAs. Instead of using the CPI-W, an alternative measure known as the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U) would be used. Unlike the CPI-W, the C-CPI-U is a “chained” index, which means it assumes that some consumers will substitute between different categories of goods in order to save money. For example, if the price of beef were to rise, but not the price of chicken, the C-CPI-U would take into account some consumers choosing to buy chicken instead of beef. As a result, the C-CPI-U tends to grow more slowly than the CPI-W.
I understand that there are serious concerns about the effect changes to the method of calculating COLAs would have on Social Security recipients. Please be assured, I will carefully examine any proposal to change how COLAs are calculated, and will keep your thoughts in mind.
Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or any other matter of importance to you.
For more information on this or other issues, I encourage you to visit my website, http://casey.senate.gov. I hope you will find this online office a comprehensive resource to stay
up-to-date on my work in Washington, request assistance from my office or share with me your thoughts on the issues that matter most to you and to Pennsylvania.
Sincerely,
Bob Casey
United States Senator
In that email, the closest thing to a response was just stock language adapted for the issue in question. I would hope that any senator would "carefully analyze" the issues in front of them, and Bob Casey and his staff have had plenty of time to do just that. Obama offered chained CPI to Republicans back in the debt ceiling fiasco in July 2011 and last year during the "fiscal cliff" negotiations, and he included it in his budget again this year. Tom Harkin and Bernie Sanders introduced a
resolution opposing chained CPI and other Social Security cuts. Many of Casey's Democratic colleagues have signed it, including fellow members of the HELP (Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions) Committee like Kay Hagan, Al Franken, Sheldon Whitehouse, Barbara Mikulski, and Elizabeth Warren. Over half of the Democrats on the HELP Committee (of which Harkin and Sanders are both members as well) have signed onto the resolution, which makes sense because retirement security falls within their issue area.
Casey has no excuse for such evasion.