The Supercommittee goes after Social Security, Medicaid, Head Start, food Stamps, School Lunch Programs, Home Heating and Military Pensions...did I miss anything?

I found it!! This is what the supercommittee is planning to do with our safety net programs. What's not included in this devastating piece is a possible increase in age availability for Medicare and Social Security.

Okay, your eyes may glaze over reading the following information, but this tricky stuff is not what we elected our representatives to do to us. Again, Wall Street crashed the economy, not the poor and elderly.

AP: Congress is looking at reducing future raises by adopting a new measure of inflation that also would increase taxes for most families -- the biggest impact falling on those with low incomes. Future increases in veterans' benefits and pensions for federal workers and military personnel would be smaller. And over time, fewer people would qualify for Medicaid, Head Start, food stamps, school lunch programs and home heating assistance than under the current measure.

The proposal to adopt a new Consumer Price Index was floated by the Obama administration during deficit reduction talks in the summer. Now, it is one of the few options supported by both Democratic and Republican members of a joint supercommittee … "I think the thought process behind this is, slip this in, people won't understand it," said Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

The inflation measure under consideration is called the Chained Consumer Price Index, or chained CPI. On average, the measure shows a lower level of inflation than the more widely used CPI for All Urban Consumers. Many economists argue that the chained CPI is more accurate because it assumes that as prices increase, consumers switch to lower cost alternatives, reducing the amount of inflation they experience.

Under the chained CPI, yearly benefits for a typical 65-year-old would be about $136 less, according to an analysis of Social Security data. At age 75, annual benefits under the new index would be $560 less. At 85, the cut would be $984 a year, and at 95, the annual income loss would amount to $1,392.
In all, adopting the chained CPI would reduce Social Security benefits by $112 billion over the next decade. Federal civilian and military pensions would be $24 billion lower, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

For example, by 2021, taxpayers making between $10,000 and $20,000 would see a 14.5 percent increase in their federal taxes with a chained CPI, according to an analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation. Taxpayers making more than $1 million would get a tax increase of 0.1 percent.

Rep. Xavier Becerra, a California Democrat who serves on the supercommittee, helped lead the fight over the summer against adopting the chained CPI. "If you're going to simply try to save money by changing the CPI, you can do that," Becerra said. "But then be up front and tell seniors what you're doing. You're throwing them under the bus to save money."