(NEXSTAR) – The Senior Citizen’s League, a nonpartisan organization aiming to educate older Americans about laws, rights and financial issues facing their demographic, has proposed that the Social Security Administration consider a “one-time catchup payment” to help retirees make ends meet amid rising inflation.

The “catchup payment,” also referred to as a “make-up payment” by The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), would ideally be paid to Social Security beneficiaries in addition to next year’s cost-of-living adjustments (COLA), the group hopes.

“Many retirees have experienced a sharp erosion in their purchasing power, as Cost-of-Living Adjustments (COLAs) have failed to keep pace with the rapidly rising costs of essentials such as food, housing, and healthcare,” reads a statement TSCL shared with Nexstar.

Which rising costs are seniors facing?

In a press release issued last month, TSCL projected next year’s COLA to be 2.6% — 0.1% higher than this year’s increase. But even though these increases are designed to keep pace with inflation and help Social Security recipients maintain their buying power, TSCL has long argued that the metrics used to calculate the annual increases (i.e., the Bureau of Labor’s Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners, which itself is a measure of the change in prices for common consumer goods and services) do not take into account the costs that elderly Americans are paying for things like medicine, housing and groceries.

A recent survey of nearly 2,000 Social Security beneficiaries, conducted by TSCL, indicated that a fifth of respondents were spending more than $1,000 on healthcare costs alone. And the vast majority (96%) thought the Social Security Administration should base their COLA calculations on another set of data, like the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, which focuses on costs affecting Americans ages 62 and up.  

“Many older Americans saw their Social Security buying power eroded during the recent inflation spike, and rising Medicare Part B premiums often wiped out their entire COLA increase,” TSCL executive director Shannon Benton told Nexstar. “A catch-up payment would help restore that lost value and provide urgently needed relief for retirees living on fixed incomes.”

Earlier this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics also stopped collecting data for its indexes in three cities and reduced collection efforts in about 15% of 72 other metro areas, sparking concerns that the more limited data might be less reflective of the prices seniors are paying. (BLS, however, claimed in July that its new practices did not result in any significant changes when compared to previous methods.)

“If the government fails to act and the CPI’s data quality begins to erode, it increases the likelihood of the government providing a COLA that doesn’t match inflation,” TSCL wrote at the time.

How would a ‘catchup payment’ help?

TSCL didn’t go into much detail about the specifics of its proposed “catchup payment” in last month’s press release. But in an email shared with Nexstar, TSCL suggested the money could be provided to eligible recipients in the same way that that 2009’s $250 Economic Recovery Payments were doled out to Social Security and SSI recipients amid the Great Recession. (A third of recipients ultimately used the money to pay off debt, the BLS later reported.)

Benton also pointed to the Economic Impact Payments, which provided to eligible U.S. citizens during the coronavirus pandemic, as evidence that special financial assistance can, and has, been disbursed by the federal government amid times of economic uncertainty.

How much does TSCL envision the payment to be?

$1,400, Benton told Nexstar. And while TSCL advocates specifically for seniors, Benton said the organization would be “thrilled if everyone on Social Security could receive a special boost.”

A representative for the Social Security Administration did not return a request for comment on the proposal.

Make-up payments aside, the majority of seniors surveyed for TSCL’s recent report still believe there are fundamental problems with how the Social Security Administration attempts to mitigate the effects of inflation when it comes to yearly benefit increases.

“If four in five seniors think inflation was higher than the government reported in 2024, maybe we should stop questioning their experiences and start questioning why the COLA is failing to measure them,” Benton said at the time.