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The soda is getting warm, and I decide to put it in the fridge to keep it cold..The study examined the increase in costs of 39 key items between 2000 and January 201The items were chosen because they are typical of the costs of most Social Security recipients, and include expenditures like Medicare Part B premium, that are not measured by the index currently used to calculate the COLA. Of the 39 items analyzed, 26 increased faster than the COLA over the same period. "This study illustrates why Congress should enact legislation to provide a more fair and adequate COLA," says The Senior Citizens' Executive Director, Shannon Benton. "To put it in perspective, for every 0 worth of groceries a retiree household could afford in 2000, they can only buy worth today," Benton adds..For information on upcoming town hall meetings, click HERE. For updates on the progress of the BCRA in the coming days, follow TSCL on Twitter or visit the Legislative News section of our website..President Trump was threatening to veto it because it directs the Defense Department to rename military posts and bases that are named for Civil War Confederate generals. Trump also demanded that a provision that would affect social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter be included in the bill..Increase Social Security's minimum benefit so that workers who pay into Social Security for 30 years can retire at 62 or later and have benefits above the federal poverty line..Congressional aides have said that the conference co-chairs, Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Paul Ryan, are "talking almost every day," but a partisan divide over potential "sequester" offsets seems to have halted progress. Half of the conferees hope to replace a portion of the "sequester" with revenue increases, while the other half would like to enact cuts to mandatory programs, including Social Security and Medicare. At this point, conferees on both sides are remaining steadfast in their positions..The findings come from a survey of 502 adults conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May. Thirty-nine percent had misused the cleaning products, and one quarter reported "an adverse health effect that they believed was a result" of the products..The more you learn about the COLA, however, the more the anemic annual boosts of our past decade raise questions. The very first COLA ever paid was 77%. No, you read that right, this is not a typo. It became payable in 1950, one year before I was born, and a full ten years after Ida May Fuller received the nation's very first Social Security benefit check for .54 - the equivalent of 0.90 today..Medicare spending in 2013 accounts for 16% of the federal budget. That spending is projected to almost double as a share of the nation's economy in coming years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The House, Senate, and the President's budget plans contain a number of provisions that would cut federal spending on Medicare. But how do senior voters view the proposals?