An Indiana advocacy group joined dozens of rallies across the state and country against a proposed change to Social Security it says will cut benefits for seniors.
The House Republican budget in Congress would tie Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustments to what’s called chained CPI, a measure of the Consumer Price Index. It’s a move aimed at helping reduce the ballooning national debt.
Seniors groups like the Indiana Alliance for Retired Americans say chained CPI could cost seniors as much as $6,000 in benefits over 15 years. Alliance President Elmer Blankenship says that’s because chained CPI doesn’t account for increases in healthcare costs.
He says seniors are already vulnerable to those costs without a cut in Social Security.
“About a third of the people depend on Social Security for 90% of their income.”
Blankenship says the Alliance wants to use a formula supported by Congressman Andre Carson (D-IN7). Carson says the problem with chained CPI is that it uses data from all age ranges. He’s proposing a formula called CPI-E that’s specific to seniors and how much their expenses are increasing.
“What CPI-E does is that it contains the specificity that we need to extract data from our senior population and use it appropriately.”
Blankenship says CPI-E would result in a roughly $800 a year benefit increase for senior citizens.
