On March 11, former Skadden Fellow Rebecca Vallas (’09) participated in a panel discussion broadcast live on C-SPAN about the implications of a proposed reform to tie cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security and other federal benefits to a chained consumer price index, rather than to just the consumer price index. Rebecca, who is a staff attorney at Philadelphia’s Community Legal Services, discussed the tight budgets already faced by her clients receiving Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance benefits, how the “substitution effect” underlying the supposed accuracy of the chained consumer price index has no meaning in their lives, and how they have no room for cuts.