Seniors and Veterans Deserve a Raise

By Tammy Duckworth

As any senior citizen can tell you, the cost of necessities like medical care, food, and prescription drugs rises every year. Our social security system provides an annual cost-of-living adjustment (“COLA”) so that beneficiaries are able to keep up with their increasing expenses. The COLA is intended to allow social security beneficiaries to tread water, and without them these already-modest benefits lose purchasing power, as the cost of living expenses increase each year.

That’s why it’s distressing that, because of outdated and inaccurate methodology that does not take into account rising costs for seniors, there will be no social security COLA — or COLA for several other programs including Veterans’ benefits–next year. So instead of treading water, our seniors and our Veterans will sink as the benefits they’ve relied on lose purchasing power.

Social security and veterans benefits are earned over a lifetime of hard work and sacrifice. We are among the wealthiest nations in the world at a time when top CEOs are seeing annual raises averaging 3.9 percent of their already-enormous compensation. If those top CEOs — whose pay before the raise averaged $16 million each — deserve a 3.9 percent increase, our seniors and Veterans do as well.

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