Later this week, Senate majority leader Harry Reid is expected to hold a vote on the two largest components of President Obama’s jobs bill, totaling $250 billion of the $450 billion proposal.

It's amazing how sequences in Washington can repeat themselves. 

Congressman Chaffetz (R-UT) has just proposed a Social Security reform plan to restore solvency to the program. The plan relies on reforms to the benefit side of the equation and calls for slowing the growth of benefits for higher-earners, increasing the numbers of years over which benefits are calculated, fixing the cost-of-living calculation by switching to the chained CPI, and enhancing benefits for lower-income earners and the very old, among other changes.

With reports that the Super Committee has been considering reforms to Social Security, rhetoric from all sides of the issue has been heating up. This past weekend, the Washington Post ran an interesting article on Social Security, its trust fund and funding system, and its future insolvency.

As is well-known by now, the growth in entitlement programs fueled by rising health care costs and an aging population threatens an ever-increasing national debt. Our largest mandatory spending programs occupy nearly one-third of the federal budget and, in the coming years, payments out of these programs will continue to outpace the rate of growth in the overall economy. As such, serious entitlement reforms will have to play a role in a comprehensive approach to long-term debt reduction, along with other areas of the budget, in order to get our fiscal house in order.

Social Security beneficiaries will see a raise in their benefits next year, resulting from a 3.6 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) increase. The last time seniors saw such an increase was 2009, when they received a 5.8 percent bump in their Social Security checks.

Yesterday, the President offered a plan for how he would pay for his $447 billion jobs proposal. The pay-fors would come entirely from revenues, mainly from limiting itemized deductions and other tax expenditures for people earning over $200,000 ($250,000 for families) per year.

CBO's latest Social Security projections bring no surprises to anyone familiar with the state of the program's finances. CBO projects the program to face a shortfall in the 2030s, with permanent cash flow deficits.

Clutch Goals -- The U.S. Women’s Soccer team scored an improbable victory over Brazil on Sunday in the Women’s World Cup, overcoming a scoring and manpower deficit with a last-minute goal and sealing the victory through penalty kicks. A similar storyline is playing out in Washington involving a different deficit -- the federal budget deficit. It looks as if negotiations to raise the statutory debt limit and reduce the deficit will also come down to the wire.

Coverage of the so-called "chained CPI" has been heating up recently, due to rumors that it might be included in the latest round of debt negotiations.