The controversy surrounding the recent firing by President Donald Trump of Erika McEntarfer, the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), who was a respected statistician (she was approved for the post by an overwhelming and bipartisan vote of the U.S. Senate) and who had worked with the agency for decades, and the announcement of her replacement by somebody who has no expertise or experience in this realm, should be of deep concern for every senior citizen for whom Social Security provides a significant portion of their income.
The reason is this: In addition to compiling employment figures, the BLS also reports inflation data. And as every senior citizen (and we are among that group) knows, the annual increases in our Social Security benefits are tied directly to the previous year’s rate of inflation (specifically, the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers) as determined by the BLS.
Social Security plays a crucial role in providing a basic level of income for our nation’s seniors, as it has since its inception in 1935. When President Franklin D. Roosevetl signed the Social Security Act into law 90 years ago, it was estimated that 70-90% of America’s elderly population lived in poverty. Social Security instantly provided a life-changing base income for millions of Americans.
Today, most seniors still rely on Social Security to live a life of dignity in their golden years. A survey conducted by the Senior Citizens League, a non-profit that advocates for increased Social Security benefits, found that 27 percent of older Americans rely solely on Social Security for their income and 67 percent of seniors said they depended on Social Security payments for more than 50 percent of their income,
The annual cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security benefits play a crucial role in ensuring that millions of senior citizens are able to maintain a life of dignity in their golden years. When inflation was running close to 10% a few years ago, seniors saw a timely and much-needed 10% boost to our benefits.
But even if the annual increases in benefits are small (say, two percent), they add up over time, enabling seniors to keep up with the ever-increasing cost of living.
With tariffs certain to raise prices on all sorts of necessary items (including food) in the coming months, it never has been more important that the inflation statistics are honest and accurate so that our Social Security benefits can keep pace with the cost of living.
To put it another way, if Trump’s incompetent and unqualified hacks do not provide accurate inflation data, the vast majority of America’s senior citizens will soon see a very real decline in our standard of living.