Budget Negotiating Chip Has Big Downside for Old and Poor

“With people facing an increasingly insecure retirement, this is no time to say, ‘Let’s cut Social Security,’ ” said Joan Entmacher, vice president for family economic security at the National Women’s Law Center. “It’s even more disturbing to be having a discussion about how much to cut benefits for people who already struggle to make ends meet — while some lawmakers insist that we can’t ask the wealthiest Americans and large corporations to pay a penny more in taxes.”

[…]
So take a woman with an initial benefit of $1,100 a month, or $13,200 a year, which is the median benefit of single women 65 and older, according to the National Women’s Law Center. (This benefit represents about 73 percent of this group’s total income, which is about $18,000.)

By the time she is 75, her benefits would be $41 less a month, or nearly $500 a year less, than under the current program.

“That doesn’t sound like so much,” Ms. Entmacher said. “Well, it’s equal to five days’ worth of food. So if you have your monthly Social Security check and you are trying to figure out how to get to the doctor, how to pay your rent and how you pay your out-of-pocket medical expenses, every dollar counts. So are you going to skip a meal for 15 days, each month, to save five days’ worth of food? Or are you going to cut your pills in half?”