–AARP Ad Admonishes Hill Panel To Not Even ‘Think’ About Benefit Cuts
–AARP Warns Hill Panel That Its 50 Million Members Don’t Want Cuts
–Key Budget Group Says AARP ‘Perpetuates False Notion’ About Deficit

By John Shaw

WASHINGTON (MNI) – While almost everyone in Congress applauds the
general goals of fiscal discipline and entitlement reform, consensus
tends to break down when policymakers try to shift from the cliche to
the specific.

One of the central reasons that these abstract goals rarely get
translated into specific policies is the power of various interest
groups that discourage policy changes.

One of Washington’s most powerful lobbying groups, the American
Association of Retired Persons, or AARP, has released a new national TV
ad that effectively warns Congress’s new deficit reduction panel to stay
clear of Social Security and Medicare reform.

The ad tells lawmakers that “before you even think” about cutting
Medicare and Social Security benefits there is “a number you should
remember: 50 million.”

This is the number of seniors who have earned Social Security and
Medicare benefits and don’t want them altered, the ad says.

“And you will be hearing for us,” the ad warns.

AARP urges Congress’s new deficit panel to focus its deficit
cutting efforts at eliminating government waste and closing tax
loopholes.

The Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group, has responded
sharply to the ad–far more sharply than most lawmakers.

In a statement, the budget group said the AARP is making a
difficult deficit-cutting effort even more daunting.

“With its size and influence, AARP could be a powerful voice for
reasonable reforms to establish a more sustainable fiscal path. Instead
it has chosen to be part of the problem by insisting that all sacrifices
be borne by someone else,” the Concord Coalition said.

“The ad perpetuates the false notion that our nation’s
unsustainable fiscal outlook is merely a product of ‘waste and
loopholes.’ AARP’s intransigent position will make realistic solutions
all the more difficult,” the budget group said.

The Concord Coalition says that while seniors should not be
“unfairly targeted” in deficit reduction efforts, the deficit panel
should be open to benefit changes in Social Security and Medicare that
are phased-in over time.

“That, however, is a far cry from granting a blanket exemption to
the nation’s two largest entitlement programs, which together comprise
roughly one-third of the federal budget,” it adds.

Congress’s Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is charged
to submit a report to Congress by Nov. 23, 2011 that reduces the deficit
by between $1.2 trillion and $1.5 trillion for the 2012 and 2021 period.

The final package, if one is agreed to by the majority of the
panel’s 12 members, must be voted on without amendment by the House and
Senate by Dec. 23, 2011.

If the panel fails to agree on a spending cut package or Congress
rejects its plan, a budget enforcement trigger would secure $1.2
trillion in budget savings through across-the-board cuts.

The cuts would be equally divided between defense and non-defense
programs but would exempt Social Security, Medicaid and low-income
programs.

** Market News International Washington Bureau: (202) 371-2121 **

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