SENIOR JOURNAL.COM - Senior Citizens Information and News

Front Page    Search     Contact Us     Advertise in Senior Journal

E-mail this page to a friend!

Our Opinion

Social Security: Senior Citizens Should Sink the Swift Boaters; Throw a Life Preserver to AARP

Let's strengthen the system we have now, before considering private accounts

By Tucker Sutherland, editor, SeniorJournal.com

Feb. 21, 2005 – The battle over how to reform Social Security is about to get ugly. The Bush team hopes to squash the AARP by using some of the same tactics they used to dispatch John Kerry in the presidential race. The people responsible for the infamous “Swift Boat Veterans” campaign are now gearing up to sink AARP because of their opposition to the Bush plan to take money out of the Social Security program and put it in private investment accounts.

At the same time, Bush loyalist are hitting the campaign trail this week to promote the idea of private investment accounts and they are armed with a training CD and 30-page memo from Frank Luntz, a veteran Republican strategist, teaching them how to sell the idea to voters.

“To older Americans, Luntz suggests stressing that their benefits will be safe but that their grandchildren's are threatened unless Bush gets his way,” according to Steven Thomma and James Kuhnhenn who reported the story for Knight Ridder Newspapers.

"This point, though simple, is extraordinarily powerful, especially with older women. ... It is the only way that you can sell them on this proposal," continues the Luntz instructions

The Bush campaign for private accounts is also using tactics the administration used effectively in getting public support for the invasion of Iraq. It is much like the old bait-and-switch tactics used by unscrupulous retailers. In that campaign, they kept holding up the vision of the terrorist attack on New York and talking about the war on terror, and they would mention attacking Iraq. In reality, there was no association between the two – the situation in Iraq and the war on the people who attacked American on September 11, 2001.

A similar tactic is being used now in the Social Security campaign. In every speech the President tell us how the Social Security system in going to run out of money if something is not done to make changes. Then he talks about his idea for private investment accounts.

Private investment accounts will do nothing to improve the viability of Social Security. Allowing taxpayers to divert taxes they now pay to support Social Security into the stock market will only make Social Security run out of money faster.

But, raising the alarm about Social Security running out of money – just as Bush did about the threat from terrorist – and then mentioning private investment accounts – just as he did Iraq – too many voters come away thinking they are related.

"Siphoning money from Social Security will not strengthen it," says David Certner, AARP's director of federal affairs. "It will just make the problem much worse."

AARP is right on this one. We have not always agreed with AARP and often find it difficult to see this monolithic, self-perpetuating organization that makes billions from selling stuff to older Americans as a voice for senior citizens. Okay, I know they claim the organization that sells insurance, drugs, investments, etc., is different from the membership organization. Then, too, when they try to speak for people as young as 50, they are really not a senior citizens’ organization.

It was hard to understand why they supported the Bush Medicare package, without looking at all they money that comes into AARP from selling insurance and drugs. You just had to think they saw financial benefits to supporting the President’s Medicare program that was going to push more business and tons of federal dollars to private organizations.

Still, AARP does provide some good services for senior citizens and baby boomers and I don’t think they are deserving of the bashing they are about to take.

“The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured millions of dollars into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to spend as much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, the powerhouse lobby opposing the private investment accounts at the center of Bush's plan,” reported Glen Justice in the New York Times.

Justice wrote, "’They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts,’ said Charlie Jarvis, the group's president and former deputy secretary for the interior in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. ‘We will be the dynamite that removes them.’”

Jarvis said the group's goal was to peel off one million members from the AARP, by presenting itself as a conservative, free-market alternative. He says USA Next surveys show more than 37 percent of the AARP members call themselves Republicans, according to Justice.

"We are going to take them on in hand-to-hand combat," said Jarvis, who is biting in his remarks about AARP, calling the group "stodgy, overweight, bureaucratic and out of touch."

Formerly known as the United Seniors Association, USA Next was founded in 1991 by Richard Viguerie, a Republican pioneer and mastermind of direct mailings, who raised millions from older Americans using solicitations that sent alarming messages about Social Security.

To allow taxpayers to invest part of their Social Security tax may not be a bad idea. But, it is not part of the discussion over how we strengthen Social Security to assure it can pay benefits for future generations.

Let’s first decide how we are going to assure future payments, and then we can discuss some private investment opportunity as an add-on that may increase more Social Security income for our children.

We also need to stand up AARP’s right to state a public opinion without facing destruction by a vicious political machine. They way they plan to destroy AARP is by convincing members to cancel their memberships.

Frankly, I have not renewed my membership, but I am going to do so today. I hope you will join me. And, maybe even more important, I hope you will not cancel your membership if it is already paid.

Let’s put the brakes on private accounts right now. Let’s decide first how we are going to actually strengthen the Social Security program we have now.

To learn more about the AARP position on Social Security – Click here

To go to the complete New York Times story – Click here

To go to the complete Knight Ridder story – Click Here

Click to More Senior News on the Front Page

Copyright: SeniorJournal.com