Republicans embrace Obama’s offer to trim Social Security benefits

Even with those protections, the typical single elderly woman living on about $18,000 a year would lose about $6,000 by age 85 compared with current law, according to calculations by the National Women’s Law Center.

“She’s not making decisions about whether to buy steak or chicken. I testified about a woman — she can’t afford meat. She buys discount cheese and slices it very thin,” said the center’s Joan Entmacher. “I don’t know where you go from there in making substitutions.”