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Though a payment adjustment is tied by law to the Consumer Price Index — which fell 2.1 percent in the third quarter — a lack of an increase would no doubt prove troublesome for Obama with a very important interest group.
And troublesome even though last year the government approved a historically high 5.8 percent cost-of-living increase for seniors, due in large part to rising energy costs that prompted a brief but intense spike in consumer prices at the time the adjustment was calculated.
The index had plummeted by the time the government began to make payments that included the 5.8 percent bump, and it remains below a level at which last year’s increase was calculated.
Still, the prospect of tens of millions of senior citizens opening their mailboxes this fall to notices that their retirement checks would not automatically go up in the coming year is not palatable to any politician.
“Seniors are already really upset with the administration over the health reform debate,” says Andrew G. Biggs, a resident scholar at the business-oriented American Enterprise Institute. “And fairly or unfairly, they would blame the administration if there is no cost-of-living increase.
“A administration,” Biggs says, “is trying to make the best out of a bad situation.”

While the President Obama endorsed a congressional effort to give Social Security recipients a one-time payment of $250 in the coming year, he characterized it as an extension of the government’s economic stimulus program.
And, technically, the White House can make that argument: Recipients received an equal amount this year in stimulus funds, though they weren’t scheduled to get more.
However,Obama’s announcement Wednesday came less than 24 hours before the government made official expected but unwelcome news for the nation’s seniors: For the first time since 1975, there will be no cost-of-living increase in their monthly Social Security retirement checks next year.