[Excerpt] This report examines the budgetary and distributional effects of using what is referred to as the Chained Consumer Price Index (C-CPI-U or chained CPI) as the official measure of inflation for adjusting federal revenue and spending programs for inflation. This report begins by describing general issues with measuring inflation before looking at concerns with the traditional CPI and the chained CPI. The report then examines the budgetary and distributional effects of adopting the chained CPI before offering some concluding observations