Guinta's right: Seniors, veterans need boost after SS checks stay flat in '16

When we first heard back in December that Social Security recipients weren't getting a cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for the 2016 benefit year, we were disappointed but understood the government's reasoning.

With the drop in gasoline and home heating oil costs, there was no inflation in 2015. There actually was a couple of hundredths of a point deflation, that is overall price indices went down.

However, while gasoline and fuel oil went down, sometimes during the year dramatically, everything else like food and medicine continued to soar, especially food.

Anyone who has been to the market knows that fresh vegetables and fresh fruit are sometimes three or four dollars a pound. Look at blueberries or blackberries, especially when they're out of season. It sometimes feels like they cost a quarter a berry or something. We feel guilty even eating them.

And services like plumbers, carpenters, snowplow operators, car maintenance and others continued to climb significantly, while rent, mortgage and insurance costs don't go down, ever.

We also felt bad for those elderly Americans who don't drive. They did not feel those cost savings in gasoline.

And we doubt if those renting out heated apartments to the elderly cut the cost of the rent because of their savings. (If you did, call us. We'll do a story.)

Well, anyway, we thought about some of these hardships facing the elderly with no COLA, but we didn't do anything about it. I mean, you can't fight the government?

Or can you. New Hampshire Congressman Frank Guinta actually sponsored a bill last December to give seniors on Social Security and veterans a one-time boost (1/12 of November 2015 benefit) to make up for getting no COLA for the present year.

The bill is still in committee, and the way Washington works, it could still be there when seniors who could use it now can no longer use it, if you get our meaning.

So we urge seniors, and anyone who believes in fairness, to contact their U.S. representatives and senators to pass this bill now. We can't count on lower prices for fuel oil this year. And with the furnace firing up this morning and a hard freeze around the corner, they could use the money now.

- HT