While most lawmakers dig in their heels on Social Security, Laura Meckler of the Wall Street Journal reports that the AARP has acknowledged that the program will have to trim benefits:
“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.
The shift, which has been vetted by AARP’s board and is now the group’s stance, could have a dramatic effect on the debate surrounding the future of the federal safety net, from pensions to health care, given the group’s immense clout.
“If they come around and say they’re ready to do something, it will be like the Arctic icecap cracking,” said former Sen. Alan Simpson, co-chairman of a White House commission on the deficit. He has frequently assailed the group as a barrier to progress.
At the same time, AARP runs the risk of alienating both its liberal allies, who have vowed to fight any benefit cuts, and its 37 million members, many of whom are deeply opposed to such a move.
To win them over, AARP is preparing coast-to-coast town-hall meetings to explain the problem and the possible solutions.
Left-of-center critics are now organizing AARP members to oppose this shift, and they may well succeed. But I came away from the article impressed by Rother, who seems like a genuinely public-spirited person who recognizes the political difficulties he’ll face in the near future:
On AARP’s Policy Council, a group of volunteers who make policy recommendations to the AARP board, Mr. Rother faced intense opposition from members who see their role as protecting low-income seniors. He also faced resistance from the board.
His argument: Tax increases wouldn’t be enough to make the program solvent. The leading proposal for raising taxes—increasing the amount of income subject to payroll taxes, the central financing mechanism for the program—would fill less than half the hole. Moreover, Republicans were not going to accept a plan that didn’t include benefit cuts. The idea that both tax increases and benefit cuts were needed dovetailed closely with plans put forward by several separate commissions in Washington seeking to ease the U.S.’s long-term fiscal woes.
I find myself rooting for Rother and, in a strange twist of fate, AARP, at least on this issue.