Vice President Joe Biden (D)
There are now multiple press reports that President Obama will agree to a fiscal deal that enacts a so-called “Chained CPI” to calculate Social Security and veterans’ benefits. Under this plan, “a person age 75 in the future will get a yearly benefit that’s $653 lower after ten years of chained CPI than that person would get under the current formula. An 85-year-old will have $1,139 less to live on.” This represents a huge cut to benefits.
This contradicts an Obama-Biden campaign pledge to not cut benefits for current beneficiaries.
In fact, in August, Vice President Biden actually explicitly told a group that there would “be no changes to Social Security”:
“Hey, by the way, let’s talk about Social Security,” Biden said after a diner at The Coffee Break Cafe in Stuart, VA expressed his relief that the Obama campaign wasn’t talking about changing the popular entitlement program.
“Number one, I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security,” Biden said, per a pool report. “I flat guarantee you.”
Obama and Biden should stand by their words on the campaign and back off all cuts to Social Security benefits.
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