SOCIAL SECURITY AND THE COST OF LIVING

WHEREAS, the Social Security program is a solemn pact made between the U.S. government and American workers in order to ensure that upon their retirement former workers will have income security; and

WHEREAS, the Social Security program is funded by payroll taxes paid by workers and their employers, and therefore Social Security expenditures do not add to the federal debt; and

WHEREAS, 64 percent of Social Security recipients are retired workers, 15 percent are disabled workers, 8 percent are children, 8 percent are widows, widowers and parents, and 5 percent are spouses; and

WHEREAS, Social Security is the principal means of support of many of those individuals, helping them maintain a reasonable standard of living, and program benefits keep millions from falling into poverty; and

WHEREAS, the formula used for Social Security COLA adjustments understates the true increases in living costs for retirees and others, particularly in healthcare and shelter; and

WHEREAS, it is possible to construct a cost-of-living adjustment that more accurately reflects the true increases in living costs, one example of which is the CPI-E, which would rectify the deficiencies of the current formula:

RESOLVED, that the American Federation of Teachers and its affiliates will support the development, enactment and implementation by the Social Security Administration of a cost-of-living formula for Social Security that more accurately measures the true increases in living costs for this group of Americans.