Social Security benefits will remain flat for 2nd straight year, government says 15OKT10

IT is not fair that a majority of those on Social Security who need their benefits increased will not receive an increase for the second year in a row. THE LACK OF SUPPORT FOR REP EARL POMEROY'S (D ND) BILL TO PROVIDE $250 TO SOCIAL SECURITY RECIPIENTS BY REPUBLICANS SHOULD BE A WARNING FOR ALL VOTING IN NOVEMBER. It is sad that we are wasting billions on wars in Iraq (as long as we have troops in Iraq we are at war there) and Afghanistan while leaving those dependent on Social Security behind, struggling to deal with increases in the cost of their housing, utilities, food and transportation, it doesn't speak well for the morality of our nation. Unfortunately, and though it may seem cruel to point out, many of these Social Security recipients are reaping what they have sown, blindly supporting politicians who are controlled by the military-industrial complex in the name of patriotism, ignoring decreases in other social safety net programs that didn't effect them, but now are subsidizing the national war machine. WE ALL need to be vigilant in the deficit  commission's upcoming proposals and be prepared to battle any cuts in Social Security or raising the retirement age. See other post on this blog on Social Security for more information on this struggle.

For the second year in a row, the nearly 54 million retirees and other Americans who receive Social Security benefits will not get any cost-of-living increase in 2011 in their monthly checks, government officials announced Friday morning.
The absence of any growth in Social Security checks for consecutive years is unprecedented in the 3 1/2 decades that payments have been automatically adjusted according to the nation's inflation rate. The Social Security Administration made the announcement moments after the Labor Department released the latest figures for the consumer price index. They show that prices for the third quarter of this year rose by 1.5 percent compared with a year earlier, but fell by 0.6 percent compared with the same time in 2008.
In a symptom of the weak economy, last year marked the first time since the automatic formula has existed that consumer prices fell, so Social Security recipients were given no increase in their checks.
This year, the picture is more complicated - and likely to produce louder complaints over the lack of a cost-of-living increase.
Consumer prices have risen slightly from a year ago. But under the government rules, consumer prices must have risen past their level when the last Social Security increase was awarded - in this case, 2008 - for another boost in benefits to take effect, and the Labor Department figures show they did not increase that much.
Long before Friday's announcement, a partisan debate has hovered around the question of whether the Social Security rules are giving older Americans and others who depend on the program as much help as they need in a bad economy.
"Older Americans need relief, not cuts to Social Security to reduce a deficit it didn't cause," said Nancy LeaMond, executive vice president of AARP, the enormous lobby of Americans age 50 and older.
In early 2009, as part of its efforts to stimulate the economy, Congress approved a one-time $250 payment for each person on Social Security, even though the size of monthly checks had just gone up that January by nearly 6 percent.
In his 2011 budget, President Obama proposed another such payment, and many congressional Democrats, courting older voters for next month's midterm elections, have called for the same thing. So far, Congress has spurned the idea.
In July, Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee's Social Security subcommittee, introduced legislation to provide a $250 payment to the program's recipients, at a cost of about $14 billion. His bill is co-sponsored by 127 Democrats and no Republicans, according to his aides. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that she will schedule a vote on the measure when lawmakers return for a lame-duck session after the election. No similar measure has passed the Senate.
In addition to the nation's 38 million retirees age 65 and older, the lack of a cost-of-living adjustment will affect several other groups of people. They include family members of workers who died prematurely who receive Social Security survivors' benefits, as well as people who qualify for Social Security disability payments. The formula that determines whether Social Security payments go up also is applied to benefits paid to retired and disabled veterans and retired railroad workers.
The typical retiree receives a Social Security payment of nearly $1,200 per month.