Action on Capitol Hill remained slow as Members of both the House and Senate spent the final week of the month-long recess in their home states and districts. Members of Congress are expected to return to Washington on Monday, September 10th. .The Medicare portion of spending, officials say, grew 6.2 percent in 2011, after growing just 4.3 percent in 20A major factor holding down costs was the recession. As tens of thousands of working seniors lost jobs, and their healthcare coverage, other seniors were hit by the crash of retirement savings and real estate values. This was followed by two years without any cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in 2010 or 2011. .Use BenefitsCheckup.org to screen for programs in your area. If you don't have a computer, ask a friend or family member to help you do an online Benefits Checkup. The service asks you a series of questions about where you live, your income, and a number of other qualifications, and matches you up with programs that can provide help with medications among a menu of other valuable benefits. .This week, lawmakers returned to Capitol Hill and resumed work on a stopgap funding measure for fiscal year 2015, which begins on October 1st. In addition, The Senior Citizens League (TSCL) saw support grow for three key bills. .Instead of using the CPI-W or the "chained" CPI, TSCL has been advocating for an inflation index that we believe would actually result in a more accurate Social Security COLA. We favor the CPI for Elderly Consumers (CPI-E), which the BLS has been tracking &ndah; but not utilizing – for decades. This index has shown that the spending inflation for seniors averages about two-tenths of a percentage point higher than the rate at which the CPI-W increases. We estimate that a senior who retired with average Social Security benefits in 1984 would have received ,496 more through 2013 had the CPI-E been used. .In reality, no Social Security reduction is small, because the loss compounds over time. The problem is especially unacceptable when this problem can be prevented by Congress in the first place. Individuals who were born in 1949 and who retired at age 66 with average benefits have lost about ,915 through the end of 2021, due to the reduction in the AWI in 200Their benefits today are about per month lower than what they otherwise would have received had they been born one year earlier. Even worse is the loss over time. Assuming that an individual lives to age 90, retirees born in 1949 would lose an additional ,297 in lifetime Social Security benefits—or even more, if their benefits are higher than average. This type of benefit reduction is known as a "notch" in benefits, and those affected might be referred to as the "1949 notch babies." .In addition, eleven new cosponsors signed on to the Preventing and Reducing Improper Medicare and Medicaid Expenditures (PRIME) Act (S. 1123 and H.R. 2305) this week, bringing the total up to seventeen in the Senate and nineteen in the House. If signed into law, the bill would take a number of steps to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse within the two programs. It would enact stronger penalties, curb mistaken payments, phase out the "pay and chase" method, reduce physician identity theft, and improve data-sharing, among other things. The new cosponsors are Sens. Joe Manchin (WV) and Mike Johanns (NE), and Reps. Tim Griffin (AR-2), Diane Black (TN-6), Tammy Duckworth (IL-8), Ed Whitfield (KY-1), Reid Ribble (WI-8), Steve Womack (AR-3), Julia Brownley (CA-26), Tom Latham (IA-3), and Markwayne Mullin (OK-2). .Money for Life: Turn Your IRA and 401(k) Into a Lifetime Retirement Paycheck, Steve Vernon, September 2012. .Members of Congress receive their benefits through the District of Columbia's small business health options program (SHOP) exchange that was established under the 2010 health law. Effective January 1, 2014, Members of Congress had to give up their previous health benefits received through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHB) and get their insurance through the exchange. However, they remain eligible for employer contributions from the federal government (i.e., U.S. taxpayers) toward coverage, just as they previously received for their FEHB coverage.