[praxulus]

>In 1996, five economists, known as the Boskin Commission, were tasked with saving the government $1 trillion. They observed that if the CPI were lowered by 1.1 percent, then a $1 trillion could indeed be saved over the coming decade. So what did they do? They proposed a way to alter the formula that would lower the CPI by exactly that amount!

I know this is a direct quote from a Slate article, but it's a blatant lie. The commission was officially the "Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index", i.e. it's founding purpose was to evaluate the accuracy of the CPI, not an open-ended mission to save the government money.