You will hear virtually nobody claim that chained CPI represents a more accurate way of determining the cost of living for senior citizens on Social Security, because if they were honest about it, they would tailor an inflation index to the real costs of seniors. The only benefit to chained CPI is that it saves the government money at the expense of senior citizens. That’s it. It’s a back-door way of lowering the benefit.

House Speaker John Boehner’s latest offer sheet to the President in the fiscal slope negotiations includes an increase in tax rates on people earning $1 million a year, the first time that the Republican leader has proposed any tax rate hike. The White House, seeking rises on tax rates above $250,000, rejected the offer.

Boehner didn’t solely offer the millionaire’s bracket, he also wants social insurance cuts in exchange.

Social Security beneficiaries will get a 1.7% cost of living adjustment in 2013.

The COLA is calculated by a measurement of inflation, which has risen slowly over the past year. However, the inflation calculation used currently, the Consumer Price Index for Wage Earners or CPI-W, may not take in the rise in cost of living for seniors, which most strongly depends on rising health care costs (a separate measure, the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly or CPI-E, accounts for this much better).

Political activists were rightfully outraged when the Bush administration fought tooth-and-nail to keep the minutes of Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force secret. Now, aside from the good people at SACE, who else is working to uncloak an equally secretive–and equally offensive–Obama energy deal?

What the President isn’t telling people is that he offered an alteration to that automatic COLA process, by going to chained CPI, that would result in a slower increase in benefits, and a de facto cut. So at the same time the President is explaining that the COLA is not in his control, he is hiding the fact that he wants to change the metric upon which it is based. In fact, he slipped and actually did mention chained CPI, in a roundabout way, at a second town hall in Alpha, Illinois. (cont.)

I called Hoyer’s office this morning to ask if he considers cutting the COLA a benefit cut, but haven’t received a response.

Yes, switching to chained CPI changes not only the cost of living adjustment for Social Security and other benefit programs that use a COLA, like federal pensions and veteran’s benefits. It also changes the cost of living adjustment for…. tax brackets. A tax bracket that might go up, say, $100 year-over-year would only go up $50, under chained CPI. And that means that higher tax brackets would be available at lower yearly income. This sounds technical, but the point is it’s a tax increase, designed to bring in $60 billion over ten years. What’s more, it’s a regressive tax increase.

Call your member of Congress TODAY and tell them if they vote to cut Social Security benefits, you won’t vote for them in the next election.

Tell them you’re on to their little game of rotating villains.  Because they’re about to tear a big hole in the social safety net, in a way that will immediately hurt millions of senior citizens.  Nobody is interested in their cheap theatrics.

One of the more glaring possible outcomes in the grand bargain would be a plan to “reform” Social Security for the long term.

Let’s recap what turned out to be a busy Wednesday in Congress, particularly in the House.