Political Quotes

“Well, again, what's remarkable--and I know both of you are well aware of this--is that Social Security, over the last 3 or 4 years, 2 out of those last 4 years there was no COLA; there was zero percent increase for seniors on Social Security. Again, as we all know, that's a formula that's tied to the Labor Department basket of goods that they spill out every year since the 1970s when COLA was first enacted, and where the economy at that point produced that result. Now, the last 2 years there have been moderate increases through the COLA formula; but, again, Republicans want to go deeper. They want to come out with a new cost-of-living adjustment formula called the ``chained CPI,'' which would depress the existing COLA formula that already ended up with a zero percent 2 out of the last 4 years and make that even lower for seniors. As I think many of you know, you go to a senior center and you talk about, how come we didn't get a COLA this year or how come the COLA is so small, and you explain to them how the formula works. Well, the fact of the matter is that Labor Department formula that we use today uses a lot of goods and services that seniors don't buy. They don't buy flat screen TVs, they don't buy laptop computers, where prices have come down because of competition in those areas.…”