On the recordApril 11, 2013
Well, I believe chained CPI is bad for veterans and it's bad for our seniors, but let me focus on the seniors for a moment. The chained CPI, explained in a very simple way, is a way that the government would ostensibly index Social Security COLAS, cost-of-living increases. Said very simply, under chained CPI, seniors would be paid less over time. The assumption is that seniors would be able to substitute less costly items for the current items they might currently buy. But, you know, seniors really use health care a lot more than the rest of us, and that's the largest burden that they're facing, trying to pay for their health care costs, prescription drugs. I think it's a false premise to say that seniors will be able to find less costly substitutions. More and more of their income would be going to that. I believe that many people call Social Security, Medicare, entitlements. I call them sacred promises that we made to our seniors. I don't believe that we should break those promises. We must keep those promises. People have earned these benefits over a lifetime. They planned their lives around them, and we simply can't go back on what we've promised our parents and grandparents.
