By Anna Daniels
AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, recently sent a call to action letter to its members about the need to secure future Social Security benefits. That opening line should have generated a sigh of relief from AARP’s 37.8 million members over the age of 50 who have been following the rumblings from the new Republican Congress to privatize Medicare and Social Security.
Read a little further and you find out that AARP is not alerting us to the potential unraveling in 2017 of two wildly popular and essential components of our social safety net–but rather the potential insolvency of Social Security in 2034. Imagine that your house has been doused in gasoline and an arsonist is standing close by with a box of matches but you are being told that your problem is that you aren’t saving enough money to tent the place for termites seventeen years into the future.
Who are you going to believe? Trump’s vanishing credibility
The irony is that the AARP site provides in depth and clear analysis of the Medicare threat and has a good planned response.
AARP has blown this opportunity to land a politically strategic pre-emptive strike against the explicitly stated Republican agenda to privatize Medicare and Social Security. Trump campaigned on preserving Social Security and Medicare, at least for the individuals currently receiving it. AARP’s position pitch should be “Who are you going to believe?” and force a public answer from both Trump and Paul Ryan about Medicare as well as Social Security.
Back in November, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan clearly signaled that privatizing Medicare was at the top of the legislative agenda. This is no surprise– he’s been touting for years his plan to eliminate the universal, single payer health care system for qualifying individuals by throwing everyone into the private insurance market and providing some form of subsidy. This has correctly been described as “Let’s throw granny over the cliff” legislation. And it’s back.
The irony is that the AARP site provides in depth and clear analysis of the Medicare threat and has a good planned response. Their Medicare Special Report is a must read.
Unfortunately AARP does not provide a similar report on the threats to Social Security nor an in depth response.
Efforts to privatize Social Security go back to the George W. Bush years. Then Congressman, now Vice President Mike Pence voted in support of privatization as did Paul Ryan. Trump has appointed Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert to his Social Security Administration team. Leppert has advocated in the past for privatizing both Medicare and Social Security. Trump’s appointment of Rep. Mick Mulvaney as director of the Office of Budget Management should also cause concern– “Mulvaney has introduced numerous bills that have attempted to cut government spending, particularly on Medicare and Social Security”.
Why in the world did they send out such an unfocused call to action on Social Security at this time? AARP needs to get much better at the ask.
NRA (5 million members) v. AARP (37.8 million members)
The NRA has only 5 million members yet it has managed to lead congress around with a ring in its nose. They maintain a score card on every legislator and are willing and able to whip their membership into a frenzy at the merest hint of limitations on gun ownership.
AARP needs to study the NRA playbook and leverage a membership that eclipses the NRA 9 to 1.
Call to Action
Write or call AARP today. This is the ask:
- Provide a score card on every legislator and cabinet member that reflects their position on privatization, chained CPI, raising the age of collecting Social Security benefits and any reduction in benefits. Put local pressure on those representatives who are willing to undermine these programs.
- Directly ask Trump and Ryan to explain their positions on Social Security and Medicare to AARP members.
- Advocate for raising the cap on Social Security payroll taxes to keep Social Security solvent into the future. Polling data indicate that most Americans of both political parties oppose cuts to Social Security benefits and support strengthening the program by contributing more in taxes
- AARP CEO should be as visible as NRAs Wayne La Pierre. (Quick, name the CEO of AARP.)
- Tell them to grow a spine and stop pussyfooting around the imminent dangers or you will cancel your membership.
AARP contact information:
CEO Jo Ann C. Jenkins
601 E Street, NW
Washington DC 20049
Toll-Free Nationwide: 1-888-OUR-AARP
(1-888-687-2277)
Toll-Free Spanish: 1-877-342-2277
International Calls: +1-202-434-3525
Hours: Monday to Friday: 7 a.m. through 11 p.m. ET
Anna Daniels
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How do we know that privatizing SS is a bad thing? From a lot of what I hear, the government has a long history of complete mismanagement of providing benefits to eligible recipients, among many other incompetent traits.
Let me disappoint you, Scott. I’ve lost money in the stock market even though when I invested I studied the companies and industries carefully. On the other hand, the Social Security Administration has faithfully, every month since I turned 65, deposited into my account a handsome sum based on my own contributions to the SSA during the 50 years or so that I worked full time. If you have money left over because you find investing in corporations lucrative, would you consider sending in a donation to the San Diego Free Press, which is open to all sorts of views, even yours.
I’m very happy for you. I can only hope there is anything left that I paid into for the 40 years and counting that I’ve been working. Your condescension is noted, and rejected.
Find happiness within yourself.
Scott, when you say “From a lot of what I hear”, I think you may be listening more to the voices of those who basically believe that government has no role in providing for the common good. These voices tend to take great pains to exaggerate problems that can occur in government programs, sometimes in order to claim that the private sector’s “efficiency” is somehow a panacea for resolving any issues of delivery of services by public agencies. I distrust those voices, many of which also stand to gain financially by profiting from the delivery of those services. And I don’t really want “efficiency” to be the touchstone for evaluating and guiding policy on issues such as health care and social services. Efficiency is certainly a benefit and a goal worth striving for, but it becomes a problem for me when it’s used to justify eliminating or cutting back on services that humanitarily deserve to be provided.
From a lot of what I hear, when departments are staffed by people who believe in the purpose of their mission and when the departments are given the resources needed to carry out their mission, then people do like the services they receive. And those agencies are even typically more “efficient” than competing private agencies. I think of the U.S. Post Office or the V.A..
I guess a lot just depends on who you listen to and whether or not you believe that “Government” is (or can and should be) a good thing, and when it isn’t, whether we need to make it better, or scrap it.
I retired a year ago and have been very pleased with the quality of management and service I receive for both SSI and Medicare. My main concern is that the system (I assume because of Republican pressure) still requires a recipient to buy supplemental and drug insurance policies from private corporations. My experience with those corporations is not so good. I really don’t want to rely on corporations, led by CEOs with huge salaries and driven by profit motive, to be my only source of insurance!!!
I just spoke with aarp. They have a standard script, and it’s not detailed in any way, nor can they answer basic questions. The magazine just before the election was a snow job as well, making it sound as if Yrump actually had a plan to protect SS. They have little to no presence as a lobbying effort, and now are sounding like a propaganda arm for the GOP. My dad lost half his savings in ’08, at 80 yrs old in the market, his SS is the majority of what sustains him now.
Robin, I printed out a copy of this article and sent it the AARP CEO today and urge others to mail her.
Retirees are no longer receiving a defined pension; the Great Recession wiped out retirement investments and retirees are getting zilch interest on what is left; the only remaining leg of the retirement stool is Social Security. Your father’s experience has become the norm.
The average SS payment is $1328. This goes a long way in explaining why SS dependent seniors can no longer afford their rent and are on the streets and living in their cars.
I’ve had some problems trying to print out copies of posts on this site. I use Firefox and the Print Preview will typically show several pages, but only the first page has text, the others have gray boxes but no text. I think it has something to do with the WordPress theme that’s used.
I discovered, though, that Firefox has a feature they call “Reader View” that’s able to reformat content on a web page to render the text content printable. To switch to “Reader View” in Firefox look for the icon that’s supposed to look like an open book. It’s at the right-hand side of the search bar, between the drop-down arrow for “Show history” (when it’s visible) and the circular arrow for “Reload current page”. Click on it and that should bring up a page that just has the content that’s readable and that “Print preview” will show how it will print out.
I find the easiest is to simply copy and paste the text into a document.
No surprise. AARP some our seniors a long time ago when they did not insist on negotiated drug rates
Haven’t trusted em since!
Ugh..sold out…not some ours. Hate phone fingers!
(try reading before you post :-)
I’m afraid AARP is more of an insurance company than a lobbying organization for retired people. In fact they changed actual name of the entity from “American Association of Retired Persons” to simply “AARP,” perhaps for that reason.
Thom Hartmann rejected AARP years ago for the reason that they are just a front for United Healthcare insurance corporation. For that reason I don’t even belong to AARP. I can’t trust them to stand up to the insurance companies or even for social security when they make their money selling insurance