On the recordMay 16, 2013
I agree. That's a very good question. Chained CPI, as you know, was--many Americans may not know what chained CPI means. CPI is the consumer price index, and that's the way in which the increase in Social Security benefits are calculated. There are some economists who've proposed something called chained CPI, which assumes that seniors could withstand a slight reduction in their benefits because they could substitute other goods and services that are cheaper. But the main goods and services that senior citizens consume are health care and medicines and prescription drugs. Those goods and services they can count on increasing faster than the rate of inflation. Let's look at how this immigration bill is going to work. {time} 1920 For the first 10 years, registered provisional status for the immigrants who have been previously undocumented would mean that people would be legal in this country, on legal status. They would be paying taxes, but they could not be drawing any Social Security benefits out. I personally have some problems with this. But under this current law, for 10 years, we would see millions of workers who are under the Social Security cap who would be paying into the Social Security Trust Fund, but none of them would be able to draw anything out for at least 10 years. You just do the simple back-of-the-envelope math, and you have to understand what an inflow of revenue that would be to the system.
