Greenspan started off with some unpleasant facts: The country faces huge annual budget deficits as far as the eye can see and an even larger bill for retirement and healthcare benefits for the soon-to-retire baby boom generation.

In warning of the looming financial crisis of Social Security and Medicare, he discouraged raising taxes to bolster Social Security finances because of the dire impact to the economy.

Instead, he recommended reducing benefits for those not near retirement by changing the cost-of-living index used by Social Security to adjust benefits for inflation, and raising the Social Security retirement age still higher, to correspond with increasing life expectancy.

Greenspan's comments on lowering cost-of-living increases in Social Security payments to his longstanding preference for an inflation measure called the "chained" consumer price index are shameful.

Unlike the version of the consumer price index (CPI) used to measure inflation now, the "chained" index assumes that consumers spend less on things when the price goes up. The effect is to lower the measured rate of inflation. Inflation as measured by the CPI has been 2.1% since 2001. Using the chained index it was 1.8%.

Lowering the CPI under the Greenspan proposal would be cruel to retirees, especially those millions of people that are barely scraping by. While it's true that the current 3% pension COLAs here in Massachusetts are better than recent Social Security and federal retirees' COLAs, which use the CPI, we still have the $12,000 base to contend with.

"Our problem is that the limited $12,000 base means that only retirees and survivors whose pensions are below that amount are receiving a true 3%," said Association Legislative Chairman Bill Hill. "That's (base) a challenge we will continue to focus on, but in the meantime any tinkering with the CPI, as Greenspan proposes, could result in lower pension COLAs in hard times. Our law does allow the Legislature and local retirement boards to use a CPI option rather than 3%. That's an option, thankfully, they haven't been using."