No Social Security Cost-Of-Living Increase For 2010

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 28, 2:52AM EDT · Published Oct 15, 6:11AM EDT

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bear People collecting Social Security have been getting cost-of-living increases since the program to up payments went into effect in 1975. The inflation calculation used to set the increases was negative this year.

The Administration hopes to offset the lack of an increase. The White House website released at statement saying, “The Recovery Act provides a one-time payment of $250 to retirees, disabled veterans, and SSI recipients. Over 64 million retirees and other individuals will receive this one-time payment, totaling $16 billion.” Congress may not approve the funds.

Concerns about the rising federal deficit may well mean that Congress will vote the program down. There are already deep worries about whether the Treasury will at some point reach the limit of its ability to borrow to fund America’s multi-trillion deficit which will continue to grow for nearly a decade according to most forecasts.

The lack of a Social Security payment increase is likely to hurt whatever recovery in consumer spending that might occur during the holidays. Many people are already pressed enough financially that they will spend little or nothing for Christmas and Chanukah. A poor class of retired citizens won’t help that.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.