Latest / Burn the Playbook with Michael Starr Hopkins / Burn the Playbook: October 14

Transcript

Burn the Playbook: October 14 · Burn the Playbook with Michael Starr Hopkins

• 0:00
  3.6%. Social Security confirmed that cost-of-living adjustment for twenty twenty-seven. The 3.5% in our earlier recording was the forecast, not the result. October fourteenth, twenty twenty-six.
• 0:13
  The announcement followed the Bureau of Labor Statistics releasing September consumer prices at eight-thirty Eastern. The Senior Citizens League, a seniors' advocacy group, had forecast 3.5%.
• 0:24
  That estimate was already three weeks old. Then Social Security announced 3.6. An estimate is useful right up until the actual number arrives.
• 0:33
  The annual adjustment did not depend on a new congressional vote that morning. Federal law tied it to consumer prices during the third quarter, which ended September thirtieth.
• 0:42
  September supplied the final month in that calculation. For someone budgeting around a benefit check, the next question was when the increase would arrive. Social Security checks would carry the adjustment in January.
• 0:53
  Supplemental Security Income usually moved first. The preceding cycle's higher payments had begun December thirty-first. That was the previous cycle's date, not a new payment announcement.
• 1:03
  The twenty twenty-six adjustment had been 2.8%. A cost-of-living adjustment responds to price increases. Calling it a gift misses what people have already been paying.
• 1:14
  Prices do not wait around for Washington to look generous. The percentage does not tell you what happened to every grocery bill. It tells you how the benefit will change. Start with the announced number.
• 1:24
  A separate decision still faced Congress. The stopgap signed September second funded agencies only through December eleventh. The fight over subsequent funding would come after the election.
• 1:34
  The automatic benefit calculation did not settle that fight. Next, the congressional polling average that day.
• 1:41
  BTP's board showed Democrats at fifty-one percent and Republicans at forty-two and a half among likely voters, described as roughly a nine-point lead. Only three polling organizations contributed.
• 1:52
  Three was the board's minimum. All three surveys were online, and the newest had ended October fourth, ten days before this briefing. That average described a limited set of surveys.
• 2:02
  It was not the election result, and its age mattered. The board kept adults, registered voters, and likely voters separate.
• 2:09
  It used each organization's latest survey within a forty-five day window and gave recent surveys more weight.
• 2:15
  The entries showed who conducted and paid for each poll, when it ran, and who answered, with weights and downloadable data. Those details help a reader judge the number. They do not make three older surveys a guarantee.
• 2:28
  Ask the same questions whether the lead belongs to the party you support or the party you oppose. Finally, a story about what reaches a senior's door.
• 2:36
  CBS Chicago reported on Arlene Newhouse's fifty years of service in Norridge, Illinois. She ran the home-delivered meals program at the Seniors' Assistance Center, now part of Aging Care Connections.
• 2:47
  "I used to be a driver, and then we got too busy," she told CBS Chicago. Five days a week, she bagged meals, scheduled drivers, and planned routes.
• 2:56
  She estimated, "I think we do about two thousand to three thousand meals a month." CBS Chicago estimated that the work across those decades topped one million meals. A formula can adjust a check.
• 3:07
  It cannot bag a meal, schedule a driver, or get dinner to the door. For fifty years in Norridge, Arlene Newhouse had been doing that work. Subscribe free at burn the playbook dot news for the reporting and next update.
• 3:19
  [upbeat music]