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The Senior Citizens League believes Congress must address the loss of buying power by adopting the Consumer Price Index for Elderly Consumers Act. If signed into law, H.R. 1251 would base the COLA on the more fair and adequate CPI-E. Currently, COLAs are based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners, and they fail to keep pace with the inflation experienced by older Americans since goods like gasoline and electronics are weighted more heavily than health care and housing costs..What you propose is an interesting concept. It would be possible to design such cost of living adjustment option in several different ways. For example, the COLA could be calculated based on the national average retiree benefit in the current year. This amount could be adjusted using the current method the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or the use of a seniors' consumer price index such as the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly. The law could even add a provision that the COLA would never be lower than a certain amount - such as 3%..Medicare's extraordinarily high reimbursement rates for durable medical equipment like back braces and power wheel chairs have made it a particularly lucrative target for crooks and abuse billing practices. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently reported that an astonishing 66% of all durable medical equipment claims were improperly paid in the government's fiscal year 2012, costing Medicare more than billion..American consumers have waited too long for Congress to finally make bipartisan progress on lowering prescription drug costs. At a time of rampant hyper-partisanship on Capitol Hill, I've seen glimmers of hope for how lawmakers from across the political spectrum can unite on this issue. We can't stop pushing for lower prices, because our nation's seniors deserve that level of respect, commitment, and urgency..The number of people who rely on Social Security for 90% or more of their income is growing. In 1976 one in four Social Security recipients relied on Social Security for most of their income, today one in three do. "Those who do rely on Social Security for most, or all, of their income are living very close to the poverty level," Cates says. The average Social Security benefit in 2014 was only ,304 for the year. That's just 18% above the U.S. poverty level - ,670 for a household of one..That is not as easy as it might seem but if they Senate is able to accomplish that whatever it passes must then go to a House/Senate conference committee which will have to come up with one bill that must then go back to each house and pass before it goes to the President for his signature. With just three work weeks left before October 1 it will have to be a marathon if they are to finish their work on time..Under the proposal by Congressman Paul Ryan, now Chairman of the House Budget Committee, and Alice Rivlin, a monetary and fiscal policy expert, Medicare would be changed from a system that pays per procedure, to one that would provide a fixed amount of money or voucher, to private health plans to provide coverage..Publication: How Work Affects Your Benefits SSA Publication No. 05-10069.TSCL enthusiastically supports the No Social Security for Illegal Immigrants Act, and in a survey that we conducted in January of 2016, nearly 90 percent of our members and supporters agreed that such payments should be prohibited. We commend Rep. Rohrabacher for introducing legislation that would protect the integrity of the Social Security program while preventing an unnecessary and unspecified strain on the Trust Fund. We look forward to working with him in the coming months to help build support for his critical new bill.