Political Quotes

“I regard it as an outrage that more and more pressure is being placed on the Bureau of Labor Statistics to change their approach of determining how the Consumer Price Index, the CPI, is being determined, with the goal of lowering it. Frankly, this is nothing more than a cheap, back-door way of balancing the budget on the backs of the elderly by cuts in Social Security, by not giving them an increase which honestly reflects the rate of inflation. In the State of Vermont, in my view, not only is the current CPI not too high, it is too low. Elderly people are more dependent upon health care and prescription drugs than the general population, and the cost of health care is rising much faster than the general rate of inflation. Mr. Speaker, in Vermont and throughout this country, millions of elderly people are trying to survive on $7,000 or $8,000 a year. Let us not cut their Social Security checks and make their lives even more difficult. Let us move toward a balanced budget, but let us not do it on the backs of the weakest and most vulnerable Americans, including our senior citizens.”