Friday, June 17, 2011

AARP Sells Us Out

This is out of left field, and extremely worrisome:
AARP, the powerful lobbying group for older Americans, is dropping its longstanding opposition to cutting Social Security benefits, a move that could rock Washington's debate over how to revamp the nation's entitlement programs.

...."The ship was sailing. I wanted to be at the wheel when that happens," said John Rother, AARP's long-time policy chief and a prime mover behind its change of heart.

....There are limits to how far AARP is willing to go. The group will accept cuts, but won't champion them, and it is particularly leery of certain concepts such as eliminating benefits for wealthier recipients....It wants tax increases to fill most of the program's financial hole, and it insists that a deal must be crafted apart from broader deficit-reduction negotiations.
Fucking madness. There is absolutely no reason to do this, at all.

Social security will be 100% fine for another THIRTY YEARS. as Jon Walker pointed out on twitter, what government program, private company or human being can you say that about?


There is absolutely no reason to enter into any negotiations of any kind. This is so obvious to anyone paying attention that I can't believe that it has be said, but the people trying to cut social security or medicare don't care about it's solvency. Like, at all. They care about the fact that it exists.

If Social Security was fully funded for the next 200 years, they'd lie and say that it wasn't, because that's what they do. They want to destroy social security, and they don't give the slightest shit how they do it.

If AARP is stupid enough to think that if they agree with some "grand bargain" that takes the issue off the table forever, then they are out of their ever-loving minds.

AARP is the biggest group we have fighting against cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and helped kill Bush's privatization plan in 2005. This switch matters, and I hope it's not a sign that these cuts are further along than we thought.

1 comment:

  1. Maybe we should have gone with death panels? Alright, I'm calling my grandma, and getting her all up in AARP's shit.

    ReplyDelete