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Congress is under intense pressure from numerous directions to get rising debt under control. The Congressional Budget Office further warned that growing interest costs on the debt would restrict our elected lawmakers ability to use tax and spending policies to respond to economic downturns or financial crises. And that in turn would increase the probably of a sudden fiscal crisis, in which the government would lose its ability to borrow at affordable rates..Medicare Advantage plan cuts. So far, seniors have not been widely affected by cuts to Medicare Advantage plans, but many of the changes in reimbursements to plans have not yet taken effect. TSCL remains concerned that the reimbursement cuts would cause plans to drop extra benefits like eyeglasses and hearing aids that they now provide. Of greater concern is whether plan payments will be adequate for insurers to maintain their contracts with Medicare to provide services. When Congress cut plan payments too deeply in the past, insurers pulled out of markets all over the United States, leaving millions of seniors scrambling to find another health plan - most often at higher out-of-pocket cost..To help your brother, you may need to get qualified legal advice. Lending and consumer protection laws vary by state. Here are six common signs of predatory lending:.Petition to Congress: No Budget Deal that Sells Out America's Seniors.TSCL is fighting the plan to chain down COLAs. Indeed, seniors need a COLA that more adequately protects the buying power of Social Security, and TSCL supports H.R. 776, the Guaranteed 3% COLA Act, introduced by Representative Eliot Engel..Talk in Congress about Social Security boost, maybe but not for awhile.This week, TSCL endorsed the Social Security Fraud Prevention Act, sponsored by Congressman David Valadao. If signed into law, the bill would prevent instances of identity theft by removing or partially redacting Social Security numbers from government-issued documents..The data certainly suggests this is the case. The years in which inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index for Workers has been the highest, the difference in the chained CPI was the greatest. The average difference between the CPI-W and the chained CPI is 0.3 tenths of a percentage point. But in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina sent gas prices through the roof, the CPI-W paid a COLA of 4.1% the following year. The chained CPI would only have paid 3.4% - a difference of 0.7 tenths of a percentage point. In 2008 the CPI-W paid a COLA of 5.8% the following year. The chained CPI would have only paid 5.2%, a difference of 0.6 tenths of a percentage point.."Are You a Hospital Inpatient or Outpatient?" CMS, December 2009, Product No. 11435.