Let the whining begin.

Seniors learned this morning that they won’t receive a Social Security cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) in 2011.

Seniors vote, and with the mid-term elections approaching fast, many will be furious with Washington, President Obama and other villains real and imagined. The whining was in high gear even before the official COLA news came this morning, with media cranking out stories bemoaning the second straight year without a benefit increase as an injustice to seniors and terrible news for the economy.

Sorry, but it just ain’t so. Social Security is a critical program that keeps millions of seniors out of poverty every year; its benefits should be protected from deficit cutters and beefed up in the years ahead. But there’s nothing inequitable about Social Security payments staying flat next year. That’s because seniors are still enjoying a huge 2009 Social Security raise that was based on an economic fluke.

Social Security has had an automatic annual COLA feature since 1975, which is determined by the third quarter Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). In the third quarter of 2008 — just before the economy crashed — the CPI-W spiked temporarily, the result of a big increase in energy prices.

The result was a whopping 5.8 percent boost in Social Security benefits for 2009 — a raise that was especially generous considering the near-absence of inflation in the post-crash economy. Seniors on Social Security or disability benefits also received a one-time payment of $250 under the 2009 stimulus.

Social Security payments can’t fall under federal law, so benefits were held level in 2010, and will continue that way until the CPI numbers exceed the 2008 CPI-W index level. Today’s final third quarter CPI report determines that payments will stay steady again in 2011.

“Although some beneficiaries feel they are being treated unfairly, that’s not correct,” says Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and one of the nation’s top experts on Social Security. “The cost of living, as measured by the CPI, is still lower than it was in the third quarter of 2008. In fact, most beneficiaries come out a little bit ahead because the real value of their benefits increased for a while.”

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