The chain CPI formula calculation would further erode Social Security benefits.

Today's announcement that Social Security recipients will receive a modest increase (1.7%) in their cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) was a small but welcome boost for seniors who are seeing prices increase on necessities, from health care to food. However, even this modest increase could be jeopardized if proposals floating around in Washington to "tweak" the current COLA formula by tying it to the so-called "chained CPI" are passed. 

Senior advocates and retirement experts say the current formula, the CPI-W, is already inadequate. Higher health care costs and expenses seniors face are not accurately addressed in the CPI-W.

Choosing between paying the rent, food or health insurance is a heart-wrenching decision many working people have to make. Just ask Regina Holliday, who lost her husband to cancer because they were unable to pay $1,000 a month for health care. The Affordable Care Act makes it possible for 33 million working people to obtain health care coverage. When you vote this November, take a minute to consider the Holliday's story, featured in a Families USA YouTube video. House Republicans have tried to repeal health care reform 33 times. Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, also would repeal the Affordable Care Act. View more stories from the uninsured and others benefiting from the new health care law on Families USA's YouTube channel. 

A total of 84,350 pension plans have vanished since 1985. This figure shocked Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Donald L. Barlett and James W. Steele, who just released their latest book, "The Betrayal of the American Dream." Their chapter on retirement chronicles the heist of the American dream's secure retirement by the financial elite and is a very important section of the book, says Steele, who spoke with the AFL-CIO about the retirement crisis. Steele says there's another number we should pay attention to: $17,686. That's the median value of 401(k) accounts in 2011. For most working people, the amount in their 401(k) account would pay them less than $80 a month for life.

Did watching Mitt Romney in last night’s presidential debate seem familiar? Haven’t we heard it all somewhere before? Yes. Mitt Romney wants to repeat the policies that caused the economic crisis that we are now recovering from because of President Obama's leadership. 

What is it we’ve heard before? Tax cuts for the wealthy. Deregulate Wall Street. Dismantle Medicare. Turn health care over to private insurance companies. Privatize education.

Watch this video for more.  

We did hear one thing new last night. Romney wants to fire Big Bird.

A three-judge panel in Orange County, Fla., yesterday ruled a paid sick leave initiative that garnered more than 50,000 signatures should be on the November ballot. But today is the deadline for printing ballots and the county’s mayor and the County Commission refused to put the measure before the voters.

The middle class is the great engine of the American economy, but that engine is sputtering. Today, the National Employment Law Project (NELP), the AFL-CIO and more than a dozen other worker advocate and economic research organizations are proposing “10 Ways to Rebuild the Middle Class for Hard Working Americans: Making Work Pay in the 21st Century.”

Right-wing economic policies have failed working families. New U.S. Census Bureau figures show the share of income going to middle- and lower-middle-income households fell, while the share of income going to the top 5 percent went up 4.9 percent. The census report confirms the trend that the Economic Policy Institute shows in The State of Working America, 2012—falling incomes and growing inequality. Instead of coddling the richest 1%, America needs to return to the principles of “prosperity economics” that have historically enabled economic security for all and a growing middle class. 

Many people can no longer attain the American Dream—and high-level decisions over the past few decades have led our nation to this point.

Join us on Thursday, Sept. 13, when Pulitzer Prize-winning author and reporter Hedrick Smith will discuss his new book, Who Stole the
American Dream? Can We Get It Back? In his latest look into the deepest layers of Washington politics, Smith deploys his formidable investigative skills to trace how we got here—and whether we can undo the damage. (RSVP here.)

In a major win for nurses, patients and three Texas communities, registered nurses (RNs) in El Paso, Corpus Christi and Brownsville gave final approval to contracts yesterday in first-ever collective bargaining agreements, reports National Nurses United (NNU). 

Nearly one-quarter of America’s workers are in bad jobs—and the number is climbing, according to a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). “Bad Jobs on the Rise” defines a bad job as one that pays less than $37,000 a year—the inflation-adjusted earnings of a typical male worker in 1979—and offers no health insurance or retirement plan (click on chart to enlarge).