Letter to AARP

Dear AARP:

I have received your letters regarding congressional moves to cut Medicare and turn it into a voucher program, and to fail to preserve Social Security at its present levels. As AARP members and as citizens who are 63 and 64 years old, my wife and I are just as dismayed and alarmed at these developments as you are.

Your letters appeal for money to assist your campaign to fight these outrages. But in order to secure our financial support I am going to require some more information from you.

First, your letters provide no details on what your campaign consists of. There is a vague reference to “push our elected leaders to do the right thing and protect our promised benefits.” Please explain how AARP intends to do that, and how additional money will be used in that effort: hire more lobbyists, buy TV ads, offer political contributions, or what?

Second, your letters appear to skirt reference to the elephant in the room. You say a “new federal budget introduced in the House of Representatives.” You refer to “powerful forces on Capitol Hill.” Let’s be frank. Those who introduced this inhumane and immoral budget are the Republicans. The “powerful forces” you refer to, who wish to take life-saving medical care and a bare subsistence pension away from vulnerable seniors are the Republicans.

I know you want to try to be a nonpartisan organization, but these are the political realties we face. Your current letter includes petitions for me to sign to my senators and representative. I have signed and included them in the envelope, but these are unnecessary. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris in the Senate and Scott Peters in the House are Democrats who strongly support Medicare and Social Security. They will do the right thing without any prodding. On the other hand, verbal appeals to Republicans will fall on deaf ears. They are the ones committed to cutting taxes and slashing Medicare and Social Security. They are the “powerful forces” who introduced the very legislation you rightly decry. No amount of jawboning is going to change their misguided devotion to their lamentable ideology. 

No, if you want to protect Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security your campaign needs to focus on alerting the American people about who is working to reduce or eliminate these crucial programs. You will not safeguard these vital benefits without defeating Republicans and electing solid Democratic majorities to both Houses of Congress. If that is the intent of your campaign then please let me know as soon as possible so I can rush my contribution to assist you in your efforts.  If it is not, then stop wasting my time and your efforts in a quixotic crusade

Do you really want to save Medicare and Social Security, or do you just want money to protect your jobs while paying lip service to standing up for us? Then let me know your campaign will be focused on electing our supporters and defeating those who threaten our very lives and my generous support will be on its way.

Steve Natoli,

12122 Royal Birkdale Row Unit 306, San Diego, CA 92128 

(559) 303-4671

Preserving Social Security: What Students Say

I was intrigued by the front page story in Monday’s Visalia Times-Delta about a recent national poll on Social Security, (Poll: Raise taxes if it will save Social Security) so I decided to conduct the same survey with my students at College of the Sequoias to compare their responses with those of Americans as a whole.  

According to Associated Press writer Stephen Ohlemacher, the AP-GfK survey consisted of two questions, both dealing with proposed solutions to the long-term solvency of the Social Security program.  The first asked whether respondents would rather raise taxes or cut benefits.  53 percent said to raise taxes and 36 percent preferred to cut benefits.  The second question posed a choice between increasing the retirement age and cutting benefits.  53 percent said to raise the retirement age while 35 percent said they would cut monthly payments. 

In both cases, strong majorities, 17 and 18 percent, favored preserving Social Security income for seniors, even at the cost of higher taxes or a longer wait to start collecting benefits.  Since most of my students are between 18 and 25 years old, I was curious whether how they would feel about a program whose benefits are more than 40 years in the future for most of them.  The results were remarkable.

212 students in my History classes took the survey.  I asked them to mark their choices individually without talking them over with classmates.  To question one, 128 students chose Option A, to “Raise the Social Security tax and pay full benefits.”  84 opted for Option B, “Keep Social Security taxes the same and reduce benefits.”  Thus 60 percent preferred the idea of raising the tax to preserve full benefits while 40 percent wanted to cut benefits rather than raise taxes.

On question two, 130 students picked Option A, “Raise the retirement age and pay full benefits.”  82 chose Option B, “Keep the retirement age the same and reduce benefits.”  On this question 61 percent said they would rather raise the retirement age and 39 percent to cut benefits.  The majorities were therefore 20 percent on increasing taxes rather than cutting payments and 22 percent on increasing the eligibility age rather than cutting payments. 

Both results are in line with the national findings, but are held even more strongly.  One might have expected younger people to be less supportive of a system most of them will not benefit from for many years, as compared to a survey population that included senior citizens drawing benefits at the present time and other workers currently much closer to retirement.  One might also have expected opinion in our rather conservative area to be more resistant to a tax increase than in the nation at large.  Neither expectation would have been accurate, at least among this sampling of local college-enrolled young adults.

The students’ choices seem to indicate a strong attachment to Social Security, perhaps partly for the benefit of older relatives and family friends currently receiving benefits, and partly for their own retirement security after their working years are over.  Most are prepared to make sacrifices to keep the system solvent for the foreseeable future.  Among these young adults, Social Security remains a popular program they hope to keep around and viable for a long time to come.

Tough Choices Need Courage

We have seen some rapid action lately on some of our most pressing national problems. The stimulus package and energy legislation mandating better gas mileage and emissions controls are examples. The bank bailouts, distasteful as they were, were also necessary to prevent financial petrification and are now starting to be paid back with interest. But when problems are less than immediately catastrophic our current milieu seems to have a great deal of difficulty coming to grips with them. The problem is often lack of courage. Leaders know certain things must be done, but they shrink at asking the people they represent to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve them. The politicians are too often afraid of not getting re-elected. Would that more had a priority of doing what is right and needed rather than what will sell at re-election time.

You certainly have to place a certain amount of blame on the public itself. Too often they demand services but somehow feel they can have all they want without paying for them. Too many office-seekers have been all too eager to make the promises that have encouraged that mindset over the years.

For one example close to home, most of California's water system was put in place when the state's population stood at 18 million. It gives you an idea how well that system was designed 45 years ago when you consider we now have 38 million and most of the state's needs are still being met. Yet, inevitably, we have outgrown it, and increasingly, gaps are appearing. There are effective plans combining conservation with new storage to deliver the quantity now needed. But the legislature is stymied over how to fund it. The Republicans want it all to be by a state bond. The Democrats say the interest on the bond would add another $1 billion a year to an already unbalanced budget. They want to fund it 1/3 by bond and the rest by user fees. While they argue fields lie fallow and the problem grows more acute. You just can't get around the fact that with the state budget the way it is, the money to build this project that both sides agree is necessary will have to entail some form of making those who use the water pay for it. But wedded to their no-tax pledges, the Republicans will not face reality.

The same kinds of dynamics are at work with problems like the coming shortfalls in Social Security. It really isn't rocket science. One or some combination of three things will have to happen: Either the payroll deductions for employees and employers will have to be raised, the retirement age will have to be raised or benefits will have to be cut. If neither of the first two are done, benefits will need to be cut to 73% of what they are now. So, why don't they act? Because nobody wants to tell the people the truth, that's why. They "kick the can down the road," and hope for a miracle, or at least put things off for someone else to have to deal with later--presumably after present congressmen and women are no longer in office.

We'll see how it pays out with health care, too. There are actually two main problems that need to be solved. One is the 47 million people are not covered. That has to be fixed. The other is that costs keep going up faster than economic growth and inflation, the rendering the system unsustainable and guaranteed to lead to a crash like the housing-banking-derivatives crash we have just been through when the economy can no longer support the price structure. Those two are the bedrock needs that have to be faced. Instead, too much of the debate has been stuck on outlandish fears and gotcha points. I happen to feel a "public option" would help a great deal to keep prices in line. But there are other paths to that goal, such as really stringent price controls that could accomplish the same purpose, though they would make government much more directly intrusive in the economics of the system. If leaders actually want to solve the problem, they will have to decide. But that would, like the other problems mentioned, take some honesty and courage.

This is an important enough issue it would be very noble for members of congress to truly solve the problem, even if it would lead to their defeat next time around. There is something to be said for being able to look one's self in the eye in the mirror and say, "I saved thousands of lives," or, "I helped keep the U.S. economy competitive." It would be nice to see that kind of courage and integrity in evidence in our own day a little more.