Tom Harkin: “So, while some say the CPI is overestimating inflation, we now know that for the elderly the CPI underestimates…”

“So, while some say the CPI is overestimating inflation, we now know that for the elderly the CPI underestimates inflation. So if you are now going to arbitrarily cut back the CPI with this sort of technical correction, by 1 or 1.5 percent, without some further study and analysis and finely tuning it, not only will you have the increase in taxes that we talked about, you will have the Social Security cuts. It will hit the elderly the hardest, because they rely most heavily on Social Security for their basic needs. And on top of that their costs for prescription drugs and Medicare and their supplemental insurance and things like that continue to rise much faster than the basic rate of inflation. I have not addressed myself directly to the issue that Senator Dorgan spoke about, but he is absolutely right. This idea of somehow threatening the Bureau of Labor Statistics to come up with the desired results within 30 days or their funding would be cut off was a threat made by the Speaker of the House.”