Three of the four members of Rhode Island’s all-Democratic congressional delegation will take aim Wednesday at someone who’s an unusual target for them: President Obama.

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman David Cicilline are among the eight members of Congress co-hosting a summit on Capitol Hill to criticize a proposal in Obama’s latest budget that would trim Social Security benefits by switching to a measure of inflation known as “chained CPI.”

Rhode Island’s entire delegation slammed the policy when it emerged, and Cicilline has garnered national attention for introducing a resolution that would have Congress express formal disapproval of chained CPI. U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont are also among the summit’s hosts, giving it a decidedly New England flavor.

There were 207,122 Rhode Island residents receiving Social Security benefits in December 2011, the most recent month for which figures are available – meaning nearly 20% of state residents are on Social Security. Two-thirds of Rhode Island’s beneficiaries were 65 or older, while 35,905 were disabled and 15,704 were children. The Rhode Islanders’ combined Social Security benefits totaled $236 million that month.

The congressional event at 12:30 p.m. will be streamed live online by Strengthen Social Security, a coalition of unions and progressive groups that supports increasing benefits.

• Related: RI congressional delegation slams Obama over Social Security (April 10)

President Obama isn’t getting any support from Rhode Island’s congressional delegation for his controversial proposal to trim future Social Security benefits.

All four Democrats – usually loyal defenders of the president – issued statements Wednesday criticizing Obama for his proposal to use a different measure of inflation, known as “chained CPI,” to calculate Social Security benefit increases, which would reduce payments over time compared with current law.

The harshest critique came from U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a leading liberal in the chamber. “The so-called ‘chained CPI’ proposal included in President Obama’s budget is nothing more than a benefit cut disguised behind technical jargon,” he declared.

Whitehouse said he thinks the way Social Security currently calculates inflation already “shortchanges” senior citizens and should be changed to increase benefits – the exact opposite of Obama’s proposal. “I made a promise to the people of Rhode Island that I would always oppose cuts to Social Security, and I’m going to keep that promise,” Whitehouse said.

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By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Fresh off his re-election victory, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse says he’s optimistic the Senate will approve new rules making it harder for Republicans to block bills, and he’s prepared to break with President Obama on a budget deal if it cuts Social Security or Medicare benefits.

Read the rest of this story »

Guess I’m not the only one who thinks this flier is misleading. Today Politifact weighed in:

A David Cicilline campaign flier says Brendan Doherty wants to raise the eligibility age for Social Security benefits for anyone born after 1960 “with no regard for the challenges it would cause for people working in physically demanding occupations.”

But the Cicilline campaign provided no evidence that Doherty ever espoused that position.

Attacking someone for what he hasn’t specifically said – that he supports the exemption – defies logic, particularly since Doherty says he does support the Simpson-Bowles proposal, which would include the hardship exemptions if the eligibility age is raised.

We rate the statement False.

• Related: Cicilline flier may mislead elderly on Doherty, Social Security (Aug. 8)

Congressman David Cicilline’s campaign is defending a document the Democrat is handing out to senior citizens that could mislead them about his Republican opponent Brendan Doherty’s position on Social Security.

“Doherty wants to raise the eligibility age for Social Security benefits for anyone born after 1960,” the flier says, “with no regard for the challenges it would cause for people working in physically demanding occupations.” The one-pager points to Doherty’s March interview on WPRI 12′s Newsmakers as a source.

There’s no dispute about the fact that Doherty favors raising the Social Security eligibility age for those born after 1960. But he was never asked on Newsmakers about the impact on people working in physically demanding occupations, nor does he reference the issue.

Moreover, during the interview Doherty specifically singles out the Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction plan as a good starting point for changes to Social Security – and Simpson-Bowles specifically calls for a so-called “hardship exemption” to allow some retirees to avoid the higher eligibility age.

“The bottom line is that Brendan has consistently referred to the Simpson-Bowles suggestions on Social Security, that plan requires the Social Security Administration to craft a hardship exemption, and any implication otherwise is disingenuous and represents the worst politics has to offer,” Doherty campaign manager Ian Prior told WPRI.com.

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The New York Times’ Mary Williams Walsh – last seen lavishing praise on Treasurer Raimondo – today warns that Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s proposal to let governments opt out of Social Security is a risky idea:

The proposal runs counter to the recommendations made recently by a couple of high-profile, bipartisan debt reduction commissions – which called for shoring up Social Security, in part, by enrolling the nearly seven million state and local government workers who are not in the program. …

More than a quarter of state and local government workers do not currently participate in Social Security, though some now wish that they did. Some city workers in Central Falls, R.I., were never enrolled in Social Security, which saved both them and the city from the payroll tax that funds the program. The city filed for bankruptcy this summer and reduced their pensions by as much as half, to as little as $10,000 a year. Now they have no Social Security benefits to fall back on.

Walsh is quite right. In Rhode Island, roughly half of teachers and a minority of public-safety workers aren’t enrolled in Social Security, and that’s made the state’s effort to change the pension system far more complicated.

Just yesterday, the Projo reported that Raimondo is having to amend her proposed legislation to change how it affects state troopers, responding to our WPRI.com report that they do not receive Social Security, contrary to what her office had told lawmakers. And the proposed COLA freeze will be particularly hard on workers without Social Security because they won’t have any retirement income that’s indexed to inflation.

(poster: Social Security Administration)

Dingley, left, with Raimondo and actuary Joe Newton

Members of the Rhode Island State Police do not get Social Security benefits, contrary to what one of Treasurer Gina Raimondo’s top aides told lawmakers on Monday, WPRI.com has confirmed.

Deputy Treasurer Mark Dingley and other officials told a joint finance committee hearing all state employees are enrolled in Social Security. But Rep. Jan Malik, D-Warren, questioned that, telling Dingley he’d just received a text message saying state police officers are not in the federal retirement program.

Dingley reiterated that troopers get Social Security along with other state employees, though he told Malik his staff would double-check.

On Tuesday, Maj. Stephen Bannon, the state police’s chief administrative officer, said the treasurer’s office is wrong. ”That is incorrect,” Bannon told WPRI.com. “We do not participate in Social Security. As far as I know, we never have.”

A spokeswoman for Raimondo was not immediately available for comment. Documents prepared by the treasurer’s office say all state employees, half of all teachers and most public safety officers in the state-run system receive Social Security, and the Raimondo-Chafee bill’s changes were formulated based on that data.

• Related: RI has no pension data for state cops, judges (Sept. 22)

An earlier version of this post described Rep. Malik as “D-Barrington”; though his district includes part of Barrington, he lives in Warren.

(photo: Ted Nesi/WPRI)

As promised, I’m working on your (many, many) questions about the pension bill.

One that I’ve received frequently since our “Newsmakers” pension special aired Tuesday night has been about the pension option known as SRA Plus, sometimes called “the Social Security leveling option,” which lets a retiree collect a bigger pension until age 62, when it’s reduced to reflect the start of Social Security benefits.

“The calculations used to determine my SRA Plus benefit rest totally on the COLAs received and expected in the future,” viewer LDH wrote in. “Either allow us to choose another option OR you must continue our COLAs.”

I put the question to Treasurer Gina Raimondo during an extended interview in her office Friday, and she said her office has run the numbers and found that retirees who got SRA Plus are not being hurt more than others – but they’re going to check again just in case.

Here’s what the treasurer told me, in her own words:

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Don’t underestimate the influence of the Projo’s PolitiFact Rhode Island operation.

When its sister PolitiFact in Texas needed to fact check Gov. Rick Perry’s 2010 statement on Fox News that “Social Security is indeed a Ponzi scheme” – apparently the newly minted presidential candidate has been using the line for a while – it cited Cynthia Needham’s Rhode Island version to help explain its conclusion:

PolitiFact Rhode Island later rated False Republican U.S. House candidate John Loughlin’s statement that “Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.” Their analysis zeroed in on the lack of an element of deceit to how the 75-year-old Social Security program takes in money and pays it out. We’d add that Social Security is accountable to Congress and the American people while a Ponzi scheme is a crime.

We rate Perry’s statement False.

This week, national PolitiFact revisited the Texas/Rhode Island rulings on “Ponzi scheme” and stuck with False – giving the Projo a cameo role in the heated back-and-forth of the GOP presidential race.

By all accounts, President Obama would be A-OK with making deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare as part of any deficit deal with the Republicans. According to The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, one reason for that is because administration officials think doing so would be good politics:

The White House believes striking a major deficit deal would be good for Obama’s reelection chances. They also believe that getting Obama reelected would be good for the priorities that Democrats care about. President Mitt Romney’s spending cuts would be worse than theirs, his hostility to taxes would be more implacable than theirs, and he’d repeal or hollow out both the health-care law and financial regulation.

They may be right when it comes to Obama. But what about Democrats further down the 2012 ballot, like Congressman Cicilline and Senator Whitehouse here in Rhode Island?

It’s no secret that a key part of Cicilline’s re-election strategy will be presenting himself to senior voters as a staunch defender of Social Security and Medicare. Whitehouse – who is less vulnerable than the 1st District rep – is planning to do the same thing. That case will be harder to make if their own president succeeds in cutting the two programs, and they’ll be in a tough spot if they’re forced to vote on such a proposal.

Paradoxically, then, it may be in the best interests of both Cicilline and Whitehouse for Eric Cantor and other House Republicans to block a deficit deal between Obama and the GOP.

The other night I complained that David Cicilline and John Loughlin were pandering to elderly voters by supporting increases in Social Security benefits even though the government’s measure of the cost of living has not risen since the last increase in 2009.

As The Associated Press explained on Friday, the reason there was no automatic increase this year and won’t be one next year is because high energy prices in 2008 led to a huge 5.8% increase in Social Security benefits at the start of 2009 – even though gas prices had long since fallen from the prior summer’s $4-a-gallon record highs:

“They received a nearly 6 percent COLA [cost-of-living adjustment] for inflation that no longer really existed,” said Andrew Biggs, a former deputy commissioner at the Social Security Administration and now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

“Seniors aren’t being treated unfairly, here,” Biggs said. “It looks bad, but they’re actually not being treated unfairly.”

By law, the next increase won’t come until consumer prices rise above the level measured in 2008. The trustees who oversee Social Security project that will happen next year, resulting in an estimated 1.2 percent COLA for 2012.

Still, the average person’s perception of inflation is often very different from what official data shows. And either way, a report in today’s Wall Street Journal warns that the rising cost of commodities like grain, cheese, meat and oil mean we may see prices rising at the supermarket in the coming months:

Corn is up 44%, milk is up 6.5%, hot rolled coil steel is up 4%, copper up 29%, and oil up 14% from a year ago. At this point it’s difficult to quantify how broadly these price increases will affect future earnings. The big unknown is not only how much further commodity prices will rise, but how much of that added cost companies will be able to pass along in the form of higher prices. …

Grocery stores have struggled with price deflation in the last few years and had welcomed signs of food inflation as a means of raising profits by passing along the higher prices to consumers. But with intense competition for customers resulting in fierce discounting battles among stores, inflation isn’t as welcome now.

The big chain stores see their costs either already rising or expect them to, and they’re growing nervous about the prospect of passing those higher costs on to price-conscious consumers.

Case in point: [Shaw's Supermarkets parent company] Supervalu Inc. lowered its fiscal 2011 earnings outlook on Tuesday saying it plans to continue cutting the prices it charges for products, even as the prices it is paying for them are rising. Chief Executive Craig Herkert said he received notice by a “major supplier” the day before that “significant increases across the board” were coming.