By Kay Tillow Original article on firedoglake.com.

In his recent proposal, President Obama included a change in the cost of living adjustment (COLA) that will make cuts in Social Security benefits. Ugly, hurtful cuts.

This COLA cut is called Chained CPI. It would do real damage by changing the formula used to calculate the COLA.

It’s a real and harmful cut to the Social Security benefits you have earned.

The Chained CPI COLA cuts benefits more every year. After 10 years, your benefits would be cut by about $500 a year for the average retiree. After 20 years, your benefits would be cut by about $1,000 a year.

Switching to the Chained CPI would hurt both current and future beneficiaries.

Social Security should not be part of any such deal anyway. By law, it can’t contribute to the budget deficit. It’s only permitted to spend money from the Social Security trust fund, as affirmed by Clinton’s Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.

Speaker Boehner and President Obama are tussling over a deal that would save around $1 trillion over 10 years. Yet Bill Clinton has admitted that the U. S. could save that amount, $1 trillion–in one year and each and every year, not 10 years–by adopting the health care system of any other advanced nation. http://tinyurl.com/bv59hl5

Astounding, but true. To end the deficit and bring care to all, Congress could simply pass Congressman John Conyers’ bill, HR 676, national single payer health care. No cuts, no agonizing, no problem.

In the meantime, only an uprising can persuade President Obama and Congress that we will not stand for these social security cuts—nor any other cuts to Medicare or Medicaid—the programs won through generations of struggles for a better life.

Tell President Obama that the Chained CPI is unacceptable. Call the White House (202) 456-1111.

Call your Senators and representative with the same message: 202-224-3121.

(You can put in your zip code and find them here: http://tinyurl.com/lbbe3 )

“I’m telling you this so that everyone is very clear: if you want to save Social Security from serious benefit cuts that will cause seniors to go hungry and have their utilities shut off, you have to act. You have to rise up and raise hell, because otherwise this train is going down the tracks – it won’t be stopped unless a lot of people get in the way NOW,” said Mike Lux, author of “The Progressive revolution: How the Best in America Came to be.”

He asks everyone to make the calls, then adds: “But it is going to take people doing more. Make sure your parents, grandparents, and everyone else you know does something. Talk to people at work and at church and everywhere you go…. Show up at your congressperson’s office and let them know what you think. Organize a picket outside that congressional office. “Do not hold anything back if you care about this issue. And maybe, just maybe, if enough of us raise some hell, this train headed down the track to cutting Social Security benefits, to taking money out of the hands of vulnerable innocents who had nothing to do with the deficits, will be forced to stop.” Above and further information is from here: http://strengthensocialsecurity.org/colacut

From Mike Lux here: http://tinyurl.com/czg5fkd

More on Chained CPI from economist Dean Baker here: http://tinyurl.com/crduol4 And from Robert Reich here: http://robertreich.org/