Email: "NO Cost of Living Allowance" for Seniors!"
The following email has been widely forwarded and has been reposted numerous times on conservative blogs. Media Matters Action Network has written a response to the text below. Please feel free to copy and paste it and send to your friends.
NO Cost of Living Allowance" for Seniors!
[note - all mistakes below are original to the text]
From: XXXXXXX@yahoo.com
To: XXXXXXXXXXXX@hotmail.com
Date: October 10, 2009
Subject: FW: NO Cost of Living Allowance" for Seniors!The Bastards!
COLA, "NO Cost of Living Allowance" for Seniors!
For the first time in history, the Democratic Congress will not allow an increase in the social security COLA (cost of living adjustment).
In fact, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation predicts there may not be any COLA for the next three years. However, the per person monthly Medicare insurance premium will be increased from the 2009 premium of $96.40 to $104.20 in 2010 and to $ 120.20 for the year 2011.
Let it be known that congress voted itself raises earlier this year in the middle of the night - of course. And bonuses were approved for their pages, etc. Maybe we should raise HELL until they pay them back and refuse to take any more.
Congress also just passed an appropriations bill for transportation that has a 23% year to year increase!! What are these people thinking????
You better start looking at the voting records of all members of Congress. The spending spree has been rampant in both parties for far too long.....
Send this to all seniors that you know. Remind them NOT to vote for the incumbent senators and congressmen in the 2010 and the 2012 elections if they have been voting for these massive expenditures.
Response
Hey! Thanks for forwarding that along.
Knowing the nature of all these crazy emails going around, I decided to look
into some of the charges made in this one.
It turns out there's this website called PolitiFact that fact checks statements
made by both Democrats and Republicans. It actually won a Pulitzer Prize
earlier this year, so you know it's reliable.
Anyway, the website had actually already fact checked this email -- it gave it
a "Pants on Fire" rating (the worst). It said that since 1975 cost of
living adjustments happen automatically - apparently they're tied to the amount
of inflation (that way seniors will receive more money as goods & services
get more expensive). The recession has actually caused the prices of a
lot of products to DECREASE (i.e. - gasoline) since last year. Thus,
there will be no increase in Social Security because the costs of goods haven't
increased either. It makes sense when you think about it.
PolitiFact contacted the Social Security Administration, and its spokesman
said, "It has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans... It's been the
law since 1975, and it's based strictly on the numbers."
The site concluded: "If this e-mail had merely gotten some facts wrong,
we'd be comfortable rating it False. But given that it targets senior citizens
on an important pocketbook issue with an incorrect allegation that has no basis
in fact, we have to go one more notch and set the meter ablaze. Pants on
Fire."
You can read it yourself here: http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/28/chain-email/e-mail-claims-democratic-congress-blame-no-cola-in/
I hope this helped set your mind at ease. The email included some pretty
scary stuff for seniors, so it'd probably be a good idea if you sent this to
the person who sent it to you.
Have a good week!
