Inflating Social Security

If any of you happened to read the text book you will remember, and if you didn't I'll tell you, that chapter 17 was about the inflation rate or Consumer Price Index (CPI). Mankiw described the inflation rate as a good way to compare past amounts of money to today's money. For instance, did you know that "Gone With the Wind" was actually the top grossing movie in American History, way above "Titanic", when you adjust for inflation. While all of that was interesting, it left me wondering if there was a more important, current use for the CPI.
On that topic I found an opinion piece that was in response to someone slamming the Obama administration for not increasing social security this year by using the "excuse" of inflation. As the author explained, however, the President has no direct control over the increase in social security. He then goes on to tell a brief history of Social Security, starting with it's start in the 1930's. In the 1970's with rising prices becoming a real concern, the government amended social security to account for the effects of inflation. They used the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) index to measure inflation. The COLA is like the CPI in that they measure a fixed basket of goods and compare the change in prices over time. When the COLA increases, social security increases by that same amount. When COLA decreases, however, social security payments remain the same because of a law in the social security bill that forbid lowering payments due to decrease in inflation.
This system is run by a nonpartisan committee and has a lot of transparency, so there has never been any reports of abuse of the system. The issue is in how the COLA, or CPI for that matter, is calculated. Some people feel that the calculation system needs to be reformed. They state that health care is not as heavily weighted as it should be. Reforming the calculation system would be very difficult and a no win situation for politicians, according to Joe Hamilton:
If they enact a new inflation calculation that, intentionally or not, raises the level of inflation when placed beside the old calculation, it will appear that they are mismanaging the economy as a whole. If they enact a new calculation that lowers the inflation rate compared to the old calculation, those Americans expecting COLA increases won’t get them and will be even more infuriated
I think that that the current system based on inflation is a fair determinant of social security. Do you agree that it should be based on the CPI? What possible problems could come from just using CPI or COLA data? Also the issue that the letter was a response to was that social security will not increase this year because there was a 2.3% decline in COLA, yet many people feel that there should be an increase this year. What are you opinions on that?