The Nation - News from Nov. 18, 1987

Social Security Commissioner Dorcas R. Hardy said she is taking President Reagan at his word and has ordered her agency to proceed with a 4.2% cost-of-living increase in the checks that 38 million beneficiaries will receive at the end of December. Hardy said she has gotten “no change in signals” on Reagan’s insistence that the pension program is not on the table during the current deficit-reduction talks with congressional leaders. “If the President and the Congress and all of the leadership decide that they’re going to put Social Security on the table, then we’ll just do the best we can to meet whatever needs to be done,” she said. “But it does take a while.”