On June 21, 2019, the Center submitted comments to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on a proposal to change the method for calculating the annual adjustment of income measures such as the Official Poverty Measure (OPM). We strongly urged OMB not to make the proposed change without conducting extensive research and analysis on the impact on seniors, particularly low income seniors.
“The Center opposes the use of any slower and more inaccurate inflation measure for the annual adjustments of the Official Poverty Measure (OPM) used by public benefit programs. The proposal to lower the poverty line by applying a smaller cost-of-living adjustment each year, using either the chained CPI or the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCEPI) in place of the CPI-U would make poverty measurement less accurate, thereby making information on which benefit eligibility determinations are made inaccurate and unreliable.”