Political Quotes

“might I just take a moment to observe that, with no uproar, we are about to do something rather important. In this vote on budget procedures we are going to legislate a change in the inflation index used to update official calculations of baseline spending. Under section 257 of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (Gramm-Rudman-Hollings), required inflation adjustments are made using a ``fixed-weight index'' produced by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. Section 1559(a)(3), of the changes in budget enforcement procedures now before us, require that in the future the adjustments should be based on the ``domestic product chain-type price index''--also produced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Given the improvements in index number theory, this is a perfectly appropriate change. Might I also just remind my colleagues that the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics compiles two other indexes used by the Government--CPI-U which is used to adjust provisions of the Tax Code and CPI-W which is used to adjust benefits such as Social Security. For the record I note that none of these indexes give the same estimate of inflation.”