Does AARP Rule America?
This is Robert Samuelson, writing in The Washington Post:
Power is the ability to get what you want. It suggests that you control events. By these standards, AARP runs government budgetary policy, not presidents or congressional leaders. Obama says we must “win the future,” but his budget (and, so far, the Republicans’, too) would win the past and lose the future…
President Obama’s proposed 2012 budget … reflects a long-standing bipartisan consensus not to threaten seniors. Programs for the elderly, mainly Social Security and Medicare, are left untouched. With an aging population, putting so much spending off-limits inevitably means raising taxes, shrinking defense and squeezing other domestic spending – everything from the FBI to college aid.
AARP is an awful orgnization. They will sell out anybody — especially seniors — to earn an extra buck.
AARP is a completely sef-serving organization with little redeeming social value.
The longer reforms are put off the worse it becomes. It’s impossible to make any type of change to Social Security and Medicare now imagine how hard it will be once the 78 million Baby Boomers retire.
Good Samuelson editorial.
AARP enjoys tremendous power now, but it can’t last forever (ask Bernie Madoff).
There is no one to balance the AARP’s power. Younger people are too busy working and building families to take on the AARP.
My 70+ mother was at a tea party event lamenting the fact that there were no younger people there. Then she realized that it was 2:30 on a Thursday and that everyone else was at work. She said, “The only reason I’m here is because I can devote more time to this cause. How would a younger person have time to do this sort of thing?”