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A new bill seeks to reform Social Security by raising payroll taxes on high-income earners and changing how the program's cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) work.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., recently introduced the Social Security 2100 Act to increase Social Security benefits for some and put the flagging program on sounder financial footing. Meanwhile, Rep. John Larson, D-Conn., introduced the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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“Social Security 2100 will protect Americans’ hard-earned benefits from cuts and enhance the program to keep pace with rising costs, by finally making the wealthy pay their fair share,” Larson said in a news release.
For over a decade, Larson has attempted to reform Social Security, introducing a similar proposal six times in the House. Chief among the changes he has proposed is a new way to calculate Social Security’s annual COLA, which seeks to protect benefits from inflation.
Social Security advocates have long argued that the current COLA process does not adequately reflect the costs that are facing retirees and disabled Americans. According to the advocacy group The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), Social Security benefits have lost nearly 14% of their buying power since 2016.
“The bill is the gold standard for Social Security reform and accomplishes the majority of changes older Americans want to see for the program,” TSCL Executive Director Shannon Benton said in a statement.
The proposal comes as Social Security is nearing insolvency. If Congress does not act to shore up the program’s finances by 2034, benefits would automatically fall by 17% across the board.
How the Social Security 2100 Act would change COLA
Social Security benefits are recalculated each year in October based on recent inflation trends. To do this, the Social Security Administration uses a separate inflation gauge from the headline number that most people are accustomed to.
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The metric Social Security relies on is currently the CPI-W, an index aimed at tracking costs for urban clerical workers. A critique of this method is that the majority of Social Security’s 75 million beneficiaries are retirees or disabled workers, and so they need an inflation index that tracks costs for them — not clerical workers.
Enter CPI-E: an inflation gauge designed for Americans 62 and older.
The Social Security 2100 Act directs the Department of Labor to publish the CPI-E alongside its core inflation metrics so that it can be implemented into the new COLA. Already, the department calculates the CPI-E each month, though it is currently in a research phase.
The key difference between the CPI-E and CPI-W is that the former weighs expenses for housing, medical care and recreation higher than the latter, something advocates say better reflects what older Americans spend their money on each month.
The Social Security 2100 Act proposes officially introducing the CPI-E but not completely getting rid of the old method. Instead, the government would use both CPI-W and CPI-E for COLA calculations and go with whichever inflation number is higher.
While this theoretically could result in higher COLA each year, the reality is that the two measures don’t differ all that much, according to a Money analysis of inflation data. Comparing the first six months of 2026, Money found that the annual inflation rates varied by half a percentage point or less each month.
While the proposal is a step in the right direction, according to The Senior Citizens League, introducing CPI-E doesn’t go far enough. The group says a minimum COLA of 3% each year is preferable because it ensures that Social Security benefits won’t continue to lose their buying power
In years where inflation is higher than that, the COLA ideally would differ to CPI-E or CPI-W, whichever is higher.
“Over time, switching the COLA calculation to a better inflation index would have a profound impact on seniors’ benefits and financial health,” the group said in a report.
For now, changes to the COLA appear to have taken a back seat. Social Security reform is currently laser-focused on improving the program’s finances before it reaches insolvency. Given that this bill includes several broader provisions that increase benefits and was introduced by Democrats in a Republican-controlled Congress, the proposal probably won't pass.
According to the legislation-tracking site GovTrack, the chances of the Social Security 2100 Act becoming law are currently 0%.