This is another misleading one. Economist Monique Morrissey of the Economic Policy Institute argues that standard cost-of-living formulas — the kind used by most “best of” lists — don’t accurately reflect senior citizens’ expenses since they spend more on medical goods and services that are increasing in price faster than the overall rate of inflation.

The president, CBPP, CAP, and a few Democrats on the Hill may back chained CPI, but many other liberal groups and leaders oppose it. On Tuesday, a group of major progressive organizations, including the National Organization for Women, the Campaign for America’s Future and MoveOn.org, joined Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Reps. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) for a protest on Capitol Hill opposing the proposed cuts. More than 2 million people signed a petition presented to the White House the same day opposing the plan. “We’re not going to balance the budget on the backs of elderly, disabled vets, the sick or the children,” Sanders later told Current TV .

“I’ve never seen such a wholehearted and rapid response,” says Monique Morrissey, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, which opposes the cuts. She calls the CBPP and CAP the “two notable dissenters” that are “much more deficit-hawkish than the mainstream of the progressive movement.”

What angers advocates for the elderly and disabled and surprises economists is that there’s so little recognition that both the existing and proposed cost-of-living adjustments largely overlook the real prices for seniors and the disabled.

“It’s a backdoor benefit cut. It’s not a more accurate measure of the costs facing seniors,” said Monique Morrissey, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. “If anything, the current (cost-of-living adjustment) underestimates inflation (faced by seniors).”

Larry Mishel, of the Economic Policy Institute, makes the case from the left against using the chain-weighted CPI to adjust Social Security benefits for inflation, as President Obama proposes in his latest deficit-reduction plan. It’s simply a way to cut benefits, he says. If the goal is a better inflation measure, then develop one tailored to the elderly’s spending patterns. [EPI]

Social Security

In These Times

These critically important findings are contained in the report “Strengthening Social Security: What do Americans Want?” compiled by the National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI). “The American people, contrary to popular belief, are overwhelmingly willing to pay more for Social Security, and that includes every age and income group, across party lines, and even Tea Partiers,” observes Monique Morrissey, an Economic Policy Institute economist specializing in retirement security issues.

“There is a lot of support for increasing benefits,” Morrissey told Working In These Times, noting that the report found 84 percent of respondents believe that benefits are not high enough, and 75 percent support higher benefits—a finding that runs directly counter to the push for lower benefits promoted by long-time austerity champion billionaire Pete Peterson and the corporate-led Fix the Debt coalition.