Washington - Recently, Congressman
Tim Bishop sent a letter to House leadership urging them to work to include a $250 Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for seniors in 2011 in the tax cut package that will be considered next week.
"Adding a Social Security COLA would enhance the package's stimulative effect on the economy and could represent the 111th Congress's final opportunity to extend necessary assistance to seniors," Bishop wrote in a letter to Speaker
Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.
Bishop is a cosponsor of the "Seniors Protection Act," a bill to provide a 2011 COLA which failed 254-153 when brought to the floor of the House Wednesday under a procedure reserved for non-controversial legislation requiring a 2/3 supermajority for passage.
"America's seniors are hurting; millionaires and billionaires are not," said Congressman Bishop. "Now that campaign season is over and the politics are removed, this vote allows seniors to see clearly who is on their side and who isn't."
Bishop noted that while 141 House Republicans voted against the COLA on Wednesday, their caucus is unanimous in supporting extension of Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
"Congress should be focusing on growing the economy and helping vulnerable populations such as seniors and disabled Americans make ends meet," said Congressman Bishop. "An agreement to put another log on a millionaire's fire should also keep America's seniors from being left out in the cold."
COLAs are not set by Congress, but rather by the Trustees who oversee Social Security. The COLA has been pegged to the Consumer Price Index since 1975. The Trustees announced there will be no COLA for 2011 based on inflation figures this year. There was also no COLA in 2010, but that shortfall was offset by a $250 payment included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Bishop is also a cosponsor of the "Consumer Price Index for Elderly Consumers Act," (H.R. 2365) which would create a new CPI weighted towards the expenditures most typical for elderly Americans and use that index to calculate annual COLAs.
Guest (Guest) from Endwell NY says:
Unfortunately, Bishop is wrong about the 2010 $250 payment he mentions in the last paragraph. It, too, was voted down. While new fees keep being invented, and other fees go up, while insurance and local taxes rise, the poorest get no help. I, again, get no increase in my $551 per month Social Security check, and no $250 relief payment. Instead, millionaires get to keep an extra $139,000 each. The Third World is not a place, it's a class, and more and more Americans are headed there. ...Harriet