According to a Pew Charitable Trusts study released Thursday, baby boomers and Generation Xers are increasingly unlikely to be able to afford the costs of retirement, making critical the need for a strong Social Security program to bridge this income gap. Instead of weakening the social safety net by using the “chained CPI” to reduce [...]

The Senate campaign in Massachusetts will be close and hard fought.  Ed Markey, the winner of the Democratic primary, knows he has to run a bare-knuckled, knock down, full bore campaign to win.  So it is notable that one of the first appeals to his supporters is to enlist them in telling the president that [...]

African Americans in retirement or on disability would be hit particularly hard by a proposal to use the “chained CPI” to limit cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security benefits, according to a new study released by the Center for Global Policy Solutions. Changing the inflation adjustment from the commonly used Consumer Price Index to the chained [...]

All the smartest people in the executive suites just knew that the taste of Coca-Cola needed “reform.” Rival Pepsi was advertising to the “New Generation” and Coke’s executives came to believe their product wasn’t what the “cool” people wanted to drink. Everyone they talked to at the executive-level strategery seminars, and all the other executive-level [...]

The Congressional Progressive Caucus and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka pressed their opposition to President Obama’s proposed chained-CPI change to Social Security benefits at a Thursday afternoon news conference, denouncing it as a cut in benefits for those who need the social safety net the most. Fifteen members of Congress, as well as around 45 supporters [...]

That was fast. Yesterday we suggested that the chained-CPI cut in President Obama’s budget, which was presented as a gesture to Republicans, might instead be used to rebrand Democrats as “the anti-Social Security party.” It took them fifteen minutes. A GOP official quickly called the chained CPI a “shocking betrayal of seniors.” That’s a replay of the [...]

Opponents of President Obama’s ”chained CPI” proposal to reduce cost-of-living increases in Social Security protested in front of the White House this afternoon, bringing with them boxes of petitions bearing two million signatures urging the president to not include the proposal in the fiscal 2014 budget scheduled for release tomorrow. “The president’s decision to include [...]

It’s time to think the unthinkable: The leader of the Democratic Party is about to submit a budget which cuts Social Security benefits. Party officials are reportedly promoting candidates with no track record on key issues and no apparent interest in politics. And Republicans are planning another double-cross, an undertaking for which they have demonstrated [...]

President Obama’s decision to include cuts to Social Security benefits in his budget is wrong policy and dumb politics. His chained CPI plan is wrong because it hurts Americans who have worked hard their entire lives and who need the support that Social Security gives them. It is wrong because Social Security is financed separately [...]

Last week the Senate passed the Sanders-Harkin-Hirono Amendment which opposed the Social Security cut and tax increase known as the “chained CPI.” That’s a smart move, and a victory for the public.  It’s also very timely, since the “chained CPI” has repeatedly been raised by the White House in its attempt to forge a “Grand [...]