House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the Social Security reform idea known as chained CPI should be discussed independently of budget negotiations on Capitol Hill.
President Barack Obama included a chained CPI plan for Social Security in the budget he presented to Congress on Wednesday. Chained CPI would change how Social Security benefits are adjusted each year in order to keep pace with inflation, and would result in the government paying less out in benefits.
The idea is popular among fiscal conservatives who worry about Social Security spending in the long term. But according to Pelosi, chained CPI would not be an appropriate way to reduce the deficit.
“What our members are concerned about is mixing that with the budget,” she told reporters at a press conference. “There’s no reason why you should say we’ve got to solve the growth of Social Security benefits in order to reduce the deficit. No, we can reduce the deficit by having people in high incomes pay their fair share. We can reduce the deficit by cutting spending and that includes tax expenditures.”
She suggested that Obama might have included it to make clear to Republicans that “OK, you want to see something in the area of Social Security and Medicare, these are only on the table if we’re talking about serious revenue.”
“We respect the President, he chose to put it in the budget to give it that visibility, but it might have a more useful place to be discussed on it’s own table on Social Security,” Pelosi said.