Why? Probably so you’ll vote for him again come 2012.

There’s some sort of nominally non-tawdry reason, too.

You see, by law, Social Security payments increase each year in a manner pegged to inflation. When Rascal Scooters and Life Alerts and diabeetus testing supplies and Centrum Silver get more expensive, Social Security checks get bigger to compensate.

This year, however, prices haven’t gone up! (According to government bean-counters, anyway.) How will seniors get by if we don’t cut them extra checks?

Listen to the heartless fat-cats in Congress:

“I think it would be inappropriate,” said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. “The reason we set up this process was to have the Social Security reimbursement reflect the cost of living.”

Now, at least a few of our elected betters understand that not granting a cost of living increase just because the cost of living didn’t increase amounts to “turning our backs” on Senior Citizens:

“I think that the Obama administration and many members of Congress understand that we simply can’t turn our backs on senior citizens,” Sanders said.

I’m convinced!

My only concern is where the President will get the $13 billion to dole out. Last I checked government revenues were falling short of government expenditures by a trillion dollars, give or take.

But according to a “senior administration official,” Obama’s got this figured out too. We’ll simply borrow the money!

Who wouldn’t want to risk their capital for a sure investment like “give free money to old people”? Obviously it can’t compare with “pay people to destroy functional cars” or “give free money to everybody” or “give more free money to old people,” but in today’s investment climate, I dare you to find something better!