John Berry on Social Security Politics

John M. Berry comments for Reuters on the politics of the Social Security COLA:

The White House's knee-jerk reaction to the news that inflation was so low that Social Security beneficiaries won't get a cost-of-living increase next year was a seriously bad omen for long-term control of federal spending.

The problem wasn't the $13 billion cost of another one-time $250 payment to each retiree proposed by President Barack Obama. No, it was the utter disregard of the discipline inherent in indexing payments to changes in consumer prices.

Click here to read the whole article – it's a good history of the policy and politics of COLAs.