Twisted Titan
15th October 2010, 06:37 AM
No increase in Social Security benefits for 2nd straight year, government says
For the second year in a row, the nearly 54 million retirees and other Americans who receive Social Security benefits will not get any cost-of-living increase in 2011 in their monthly checks, government officials announced Friday morning.
The absence of any growth in Social Security checks for consecutive years is unprecedented in the 3 1/2 decades that payments have been automatically adjusted according to the nation's inflation rate. The Social Security Administration made the announcement moments after the Labor Department released the latest figures for the consumer price index. They show that prices for the third quarter of this year rose by 1.5 percent compared with a year earlier, but fell by 0.6 percent compared with the same time in 2008.
In a symptom of the weak economy, last year marked the first time since the automatic formula has existed that consumer prices fell, so Social Security recipients were given no increase in their checks.
This year, the picture is more complicated -- and likely to produce louder complaints over the lack of a cost-of-living increase.
Consumer prices have risen slightly from a year ago. But under the government rules, consumer prices must have risen past their level when the last Social Security increase was awarded -- in this case, 2008 -- for another boost in benefits to take effect, and the Labor Department figures show they did not increase that much.
Long before Friday's announcement, a partisan debate has hovered around the question of whether the Social Security rules are giving older Americans and others who depend on the program as much help as they need in a bad economy.
"Older Americans need relief, not cuts to Social Security to reduce a deficit [it] didn't cause," said Nancy LeaMond, executive vice president of AARP, the enormous lobby of Americans age 50 and older.
In early 2009, as part of its efforts to stimulate the economy, Congress approved a one-time $250 payment for each person on Social Security, even though the size of monthly checks had just gone up that January by nearly 6 percent.
In his 2011 budget, President Obama proposed another such payment, and many congressional Democrats, courting older voters for next month's midterm elections, have called for the same thing. So far, Congress has spurned the idea.
In July, Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee's Social Security subcommittee, introduced legislation to provide a $250 payment to the program's recipients, at a cost of about $14 billion. His bill is co-sponsored by 127 Democrats and no Republicans, according to his aides. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she will schedule a vote on the measure when lawmakers return for a lame-duck session after the election. No similar measure has passed the Senate.
In addition to the nation's 38 million retirees age 65 and older, the lack of a cost-of-living adjustment will affect several other groups of people. They include family members of workers who died prematurely who receive Social Security survivors' benefits, as well as people who qualify for Social Security disability payments. The formula that determines whether Social Security payments go up also is applied to benefits paid to retired and disabled veterans and retired railroad workers.
The typical retiree receives a Social Security payment of nearly $1,200 per month.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/15/AR2010101501924.html?hpid=topnews
For the second year in a row, the nearly 54 million retirees and other Americans who receive Social Security benefits will not get any cost-of-living increase in 2011 in their monthly checks, government officials announced Friday morning.
The absence of any growth in Social Security checks for consecutive years is unprecedented in the 3 1/2 decades that payments have been automatically adjusted according to the nation's inflation rate. The Social Security Administration made the announcement moments after the Labor Department released the latest figures for the consumer price index. They show that prices for the third quarter of this year rose by 1.5 percent compared with a year earlier, but fell by 0.6 percent compared with the same time in 2008.
In a symptom of the weak economy, last year marked the first time since the automatic formula has existed that consumer prices fell, so Social Security recipients were given no increase in their checks.
This year, the picture is more complicated -- and likely to produce louder complaints over the lack of a cost-of-living increase.
Consumer prices have risen slightly from a year ago. But under the government rules, consumer prices must have risen past their level when the last Social Security increase was awarded -- in this case, 2008 -- for another boost in benefits to take effect, and the Labor Department figures show they did not increase that much.
Long before Friday's announcement, a partisan debate has hovered around the question of whether the Social Security rules are giving older Americans and others who depend on the program as much help as they need in a bad economy.
"Older Americans need relief, not cuts to Social Security to reduce a deficit [it] didn't cause," said Nancy LeaMond, executive vice president of AARP, the enormous lobby of Americans age 50 and older.
In early 2009, as part of its efforts to stimulate the economy, Congress approved a one-time $250 payment for each person on Social Security, even though the size of monthly checks had just gone up that January by nearly 6 percent.
In his 2011 budget, President Obama proposed another such payment, and many congressional Democrats, courting older voters for next month's midterm elections, have called for the same thing. So far, Congress has spurned the idea.
In July, Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee's Social Security subcommittee, introduced legislation to provide a $250 payment to the program's recipients, at a cost of about $14 billion. His bill is co-sponsored by 127 Democrats and no Republicans, according to his aides. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she will schedule a vote on the measure when lawmakers return for a lame-duck session after the election. No similar measure has passed the Senate.
In addition to the nation's 38 million retirees age 65 and older, the lack of a cost-of-living adjustment will affect several other groups of people. They include family members of workers who died prematurely who receive Social Security survivors' benefits, as well as people who qualify for Social Security disability payments. The formula that determines whether Social Security payments go up also is applied to benefits paid to retired and disabled veterans and retired railroad workers.
The typical retiree receives a Social Security payment of nearly $1,200 per month.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/15/AR2010101501924.html?hpid=topnews