AARP Signs Off On Obama Tax Cut Provision

[bluestateguy]

WASHINGTON -- The country's foremost senior-issues advocacy organization on Friday night lent its support to a critical provision of the president's tax cut deal with Republicans.

In what could prove to be a consequential assessment of "the framework," AARP's Executive Vice President John Rother says that both he and his organization have determined that a two percentage point reduction in the payroll tax rate (from which Social Security gets its revenue) would not endanger the solvency of their community's cherished program.

Critics of the tax cut deal have raised concerns that the even though the holiday is structured to be in place for just one year, lawmakers would feel compelled to extend the policy well beyond that, in the process endangering Social Security's finances.

Mother Jones called the provision a "Trojan Horse for Republicans."

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Maybe a fair compromise here is that anyone who opposes the payroll tax cut should be a allowed to return the money to the Social Security trust fund.

[hfojvt]

1. that last line is pure Limbaugh

from after the Bush tax cuts of 2001. Riiight. Because I oppose a tax cut of $2000 going to people with incomes over $400,000, then I should return the $300 that the same tax cut gives to me. Sure, that makes perfect sense. Let's just make an uequal and unfair tax cut even more unequal and unfair.

[dennis4868]

2. AARP as well as....

Many others who write about tax policy and social security say that the temporary payroll tax cut will not effect the program at all...this makes alot of sense....alot of liberals who don't like any compromise are yelling from the rooftops about this for no reason other than to make Obama look bad. I am happy that AARP endorsed the deal.

[TheKentuckian]

4. cause, cause Bush was right!

We...we...we just opposed him for politics.

He was right about the wars, he right on taxes, he was right on Wall Street, he was right on education, he was right on civil liberties, and just about everything.

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[dennis4868]

7. Not sure what....

This has to do with AARP and other tax law followers saying the temporary payroll tax cut will not weaken social security? I guess you needed to get that off your chest....have at it!

[Hoyt]

11. Agreed. If the 2% temporary reduction helps increase employment, more money to SS and general fund.

I swear that some folks are starting to sound much like the teabaggers -- seeing the worst outcome in everything Obama does.

[aquart]

3. Not their first betrayal.

[mikehiggins]

5. certainly not their first betrayal

I have JUST rejoined AARP after the sour taste of their support for Bush's drug plan.

Now I have to quit all over again.

Sheeessssh

[shirlden]

6. I didn't rejoin

Are the members against this or for it??? Or are they ignoring it. How can AARP be for the first step in the destruction of SS?

[freshwest]

9. Low Opinion of AARP For Years Now

I first read some of their magazines years ago, long before Bush and his cronies did their best to bankrupt Medicare. My primary objection to the Obama health care reform was that it seemed to be the same philosophy of giving more money to the people who gave the American retirees such a deceptive and unworkable deal. They looted the public.

When I first looked at their writings, some of their editorials on how to keep Social Security solvent for the Greatest Generation were based on the premise that those who followed them didn't really deserve the help, and that those disabled at work or birth, were going to ruin their good deal. It was a sort of age discrimination in reverse, not really thinking of spreading the New Deal to others.

That was really offensive to me. I've run into real life retirees who would literally spit on the upcoming generations and those among them who for some reason or another, needed help. It seemed hypocritical for them to look down on others for lack of financial independence when one of the cornerstones of their own security was a social problem that required all those others to pay in.

Not that most retirees have a bad attitude. Just some do and it makes me suspicious. Were they among the Tea Party protesters who mocked the guys with Parkinson's in Ohio? Are they the ones who carried signs saying how socialism needed to be stopped to save their health care, when their health care plan is socialism?

As far as the prescription drug support of AARP, I saw a conflict of interest as they were selling their own version of prescription and back-up medical plans. And they aren't that good, either.

Over the last few decades I've found that in several 'advocacy' groups, there is money to be made that they don't talk about. Some of these 'non-profit' groups seek to steer public policy in a certain direction to send public funds into private pockets.

Because that is the real goal, they abuse the very people or causes they get money to represent, even while using civil rights arguments or other reasonings. It was heartbreaking for me to learn that there isn't much idealism or altruism in some of them. They simply muddy the water.

The AARP's support of this may also return to my first statements about their bias. Not all their members, nor all their editors and employees. But in doing this it makes me feel that they are simply going to ride things out for that one generation to pass and then throw the present and future ones under the bus.

I'm sorry to sound so cynical. And I could be completely wrong, missing something big, but that's just my impression.

And yes, I am totally against what they have signed onto here.

[DCKit]

10. I so totally agree with your assessment. nt

[Hoyt]

12. After paying for my mother's drugs for years, bush's drug plan was better than the status quo.

She died before the coverage came in, but it is better than no prescription drug coverage. Yea, there is the donut-hole and supposedly no negotiating, but it is help for seniors that previously had to forgo meds, or cut them in thirds. In a very few years, I'll be glad to have that coverage which didn't exist before. Of course, that was about the only decent thing bush did and it sure didn't make up for the bad.

BTW -- the drug plan took 40 years to add to Medicare. Let's hope the needed changes to HCReform come sooner. I think they will.

[MadHound]

8. I'm sure that their constituency was more worried about the estate tax provision

Than they were about payroll deduction. They already know that they're grandfathered in to full SS benefits, it is those of us who are still fifteen, twenty years out who have the most to lose from SS.

But the AARP folks get to pass along their wealth with a minimal hit, hooray.