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Q: How will the sequester impact my Social Security payments?

A: Gary Koenig is the director of the AARP Public Policy Institute’s economic team. This team has spent 25 years studying how proposed changes to Social Security, pensions, workplace regulations and tax issues impact older Americans.

He said the sequester, a series of spending cuts that went into effect March 1 when the U.S. Congress couldn’t come up with a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade, won’t affect the amount of money people receive from Social Security or how those checks are delivered.

“But it will probably affect everything else,” Koenig said.

Because the sequester may force the Social Security Administration to cut back on the number of hours its employees work or the number of temporary employees it hires during its busy seasons, Koenig said, the program’s beneficiaries may find themselves spending more time waiting for someone to help them if they have a question about their benefits.

People who apply for Social Security’s Supplemental Insurance Program, also known as disability benefits, may have to wait two weeks longer for their initial claims to be processed and one month longer to have a hearing scheduled.

Though the sequester itself will not hurt future disability payments, Koenig and other researchers are worried a proposal being discussed in the ongoing deficit reduction talks will hurt seniors. This proposal is called the “chained” Consumer Price Index.

“It’s just not the right policy because it will reduce benefits for people when they are the most vulnerable,” Koenig said of the chained CPI, which has been discussed but has so far not been included in any piece of legislation or deficit reduction proposal.

Using the chained CPI instead of the currently used CPI to calculate cost of living adjustments for government programs such as Social Security may result in savings to the government. But over the long term, Koenig said, Social Security payments would grow at a much slower rate than they currently do.

By the time this reduction in income starts to really take effect, many seniors may have reached a point where they’ve spent their savings – which makes them even more reliant on their Social Security payments – and are paying higher health care bills because of their age.