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A new Social Security COLA projection may be cause for ‘worry,’ senior group says

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by Michael Bartiromo - 04/15/26 2:27 PM ET

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by Michael Bartiromo - 04/15/26 2:27 PM ET

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(NEXSTAR) – If their current projections are right, next year’s cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for senior citizens receiving Social Security benefits could be cause for “worry,” according to The Senior Citizens League.

The Senior Citizen’s League (TSCL), a nonpartisan organization aiming to educate older Americans about laws, rights and financial issues facing their demographic, predicted this week that 2027’s COLA would amount to a 2.8% increase — the same as 2026’s, which TSCL had called “meager” upon its announcement in November 2026.

“Americans are right to worry about our current COLA projection. The fact is that most senior households already get by on only about 58% as much income as their working-age counterparts, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a middle-class or working-class American who thinks the economy is doing well right now, especially as oil prices rise,” Shannon Benton, the executive director of TSCL, was quoted as saying in a recent press release.

TSCL bases its projections on the same metrics used by the Social Security Administration to calculate the annual COLA for retired beneficiaries. But the group has long argued that this data (i.e., the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners, which itself is a measure of the change in prices for common consumer goods and services) does not take into account the costs that elderly Americans are paying for things like medicine, housing and groceries.

In November 2026, when the current year’s COLA was announced, TSCL pointed to a survey of seniors that found only 10% to be satisfied with their monthly benefits, “with many citing COLAs that lag inflation as a problem.”

The group has also pushed for Congress to overhaul its method for calculating COLAs, favoring a system based not on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners, but the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E) — which is “specifically based on the spending patterns of Americans 62 years of age and older,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. Alternately, the group has voiced interest in a system they call “CPI Best,” which means basing each year’s COLA increase on the highest of three options: the CPI-W, the CPI-E, or a minimum increase of 3%.

TSCL fears seniors may soon be contending with another benefit limit, too: a proposed “cap” on the benefit amount that retirees are able to collect.

In March, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit think-tank in D.C., proposed the idea of a “six figure limit” for couples receiving SSA retirement benefits. And while that limit would only affect the “very highest income couples” as of 2026, an increasing percentage of retirees would be limited by the cap in future years.

“One issue with the Six Figure Limit plan is that it does not guarantee that its new cap on Social Security benefits would increase over time as the economy grows or might freeze the cap for up to 30 years before allowing it to grow,” TSCL wrote in its release.

Instead, TSCL says a large chunk of its survey respondents believe the Social Security Administration should find ways to avoid insolvency, like removing a cap on contributions from the country’s wealthiest earners.

“Rather than taking away benefits from people who have paid into the system their entire working lives, we should focus on strengthening America’s pension system,” Benton said. “Seniors tell us over and over that their benefits don’t go as far as they used to, and many younger people worry if the program will have atrophied to a shadow of its former self by the time they reach retirement age, even as taxes on their wages cover today’s benefits.”

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