Bob Franks: “I reflected on the fact that budget proposals are indeed a reflection of our values and our priorities, and in one…”

“I reflected on the fact that budget proposals are indeed a reflection of our values and our priorities, and in one important respect there is something fundamentally dangerous about the budget resolution that is before us today. It seeks to impose legislatively an arbitrary so-called correction of the Consumer Price Index. Now there is a body of economists who believe that the CPI currently overstates the impact of inflation, and I think most of us would agree that something should be done about it. But what the blue dog budget seeks to do would not only, if adopted, reduce Social Security checks next year, but it would set the movement to try to responsibly reform the CPI back for years. We should only be tinkering with this measure of inflation after a technically competent group can arrive at some scientific measures of the most popular recognition of how we can more accurately assess the impact of inflation. To rely on a budget fix, not of a hundred million or a billion or $10 billion, but in excess of $50 billion with the CPI plug when we do not have the final analysis having been completed by either BLS or by the Senate Finance Committee's commission. We can wait and know that we have got the scientific efficacy, the legitimacy, to make this change. To arbitrarily make it in the form of legislation will, in my judgment, set back the cause of responsibly reforming the CPI.”