Tax Bill Horribleness: Chained CPI

The Los Angeles Times has an article on the proposed tax bill’s inclusion of “chained consumer price index (CPI). It briefly lays out the several ways that this flawed metric for inflation will harm lower to middle class citizens, which extends well beyond lower cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security benefits.

The lesson is that no one should be fooled about why the GOP tax bills incorporate the chained CPI. It’s all about taking more money from working Americans and sending it up the income ladder to the wealthy. But we knew that.

Of course, chained CPI may be the least of our worries when it comes to Social Security. The LA Times also reports on Marco Rubio noting the two-step the GOP wants, where the deficits and debt run up by their tax-cut give-away to the wealthy will somehow force them to find savings in “structural” changes to Medicare and Social Security. Just after last year’s election, I observed that the GOP would be going for a full repeal of the Great Society and New Deal programs, and here we have confirmation that that is exactly the strategy they are pursuing.