Tom Harkin: “I congratulate and thank my colleague from North Dakota for offering this amendment, for his thoughtful insight into…”

“I congratulate and thank my colleague from North Dakota for offering this amendment, for his thoughtful insight into what some people in the Republican party over on the other side are calling a technical correction in the Consumer Price Index or CPI, our basic measure of the rate of inflation. I think that is what the leaders of the other body called it, a technical correction. Well, you know, some people said ketchup was a vegetable once, too. These technical corrections at some time have very serious consequences. So while you can call it a technical correction, it is nothing less than two things. It is a stealth tax on the middle class, and it is a cut in Social Security benefits for the elderly, both of which I might add are just the opposite of what my friends in the Republican Party have said they want to do. So I think this amendment would help my friends on the other side clear up the issue. It would make it clear that we do not in any way want to put pressure on the independent Bureau of Labor Statistics to somehow come up and rush through and make a finding on the basis of political pressure but that, indeed, it ought to be thought through very carefully. The Senator from North Dakota is absolutely right that this change in the CPI has consequences, big consequences--about $21 billion in higher taxes annually by the year 2000 and $27.5 billion cut in Social Security in that same year.”