Obama Weighs Social Security Benefit Cut In Fiscal Negotiations — Here’s How It Works | TPMDC

Obama Weighs Social Security Benefit Cut In Fiscal Negotiations — Here’s How It Works | TPMDC:

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 The quasi-technical term for the new index is called chained CPI. It’s been kicking around in policy circles for years, and loomed large in budget negotiations between Obama and Boehner in 2011.

Supporters like to describe it as a technical fix to the way the government calculates inflation. But in practical terms, it will effectuate a genuine Social Security benefit cut. If it’s applied across the board, it will also reduce food stamp benefits and veterans benefits, and function as a modest but regressive tax increase, as brackets grow more slowly and taxpayers find themselves pushed across income thresholds more quickly than in the past.

Chained CPI differs from the way the government currently calculates inflation by taking a broader view of the behavioral changes consumers make when prices rise.

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note:  if dems cave on ths; watch a serious backlash 

hard to ask folks to vote for perpetual losers and backstabbers