Government won't give Social Security recipients their increase

Elderly and disabled Americans have worked hard their whole lives paying into Social Security. It's a system that's supposed to provide the economic security they need and have earned.

But now it looks like they're going to see much less of their money coming back to them.

The government now says that those of you who receive any type of Social Security benefit won't be getting a cost-of-living increase next year - and probably none the year after that either. Because all that (whoosh...whoosh) inflation over the past year, you see, is just our imagination (according to the government).

This will be the first year since the low-inflation '70s with no cost-of-living increase. Because all the later inflation is all in our heads, you see.

An AARP official said that if there's no cost-of-living increase, and if drug premiums go up as expected, "millions of beneficiaries will see their Social Security checks reduced for the first time."

If drug premiums go up, how can the government stand there and insist there's no inflation?

What warmed-over Bushbot bureaucrat is calculating the inflation rate? Nobody hired by the Obama administration could possibly be stupid enough to say there's been no inflation in the past year. Indeed, the numbers come mostly from the Congressional Budget Office (not the White House), and anyone who reads this blog knows Congress is led by the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

You can almost bet your bottom dollar Congress will get its annual pay increase (despite it being unconstitutional). They wouldn't deny themselves that.

Nor will it deny the entitlement monarchs of AIG another $30,000,000,000.

All this after the cost-of-living increase for Social Security was being undercounted in the first place!

I think Congress ought to increase Social Security anyway, regardless of what official cost-of-living numbers suggest. To claim there's been no inflation in the past year borders on the psychotic.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/us/politics/03benefits.html)