After reading the articles, the claims and counter claims, the information on the AARP web site, and the reports on the national evening news I sent the following letter to them. My wife and I are 10-year-plus members of AARP and are currently on Social Security. I don't intend to '...go gentle into that good night.' I WILL rage, rage against the going of the light.
Follow me below the fold.
To whom it may concern:
We seniors have paid into Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for our entire working lives. This in response to a promise made to us by the Government of the United States that we would get benefits when we retired. The Government of the United States balanced the budget by ‘borrowing’ from the Social Security Trust Fund. Now they want to renege on the promise made to us – we workers who made the United States the most productive nation on the face of the earth. Now, Congress wants to continue the give away to the Bankers, the fat cat CEO’s, the uber-rich by cutting OUR benefits in the name of ‘cutting government spending’.
The AARP is supposed to be dedicated to protecting the rights of seniors. To accept cuts to Social Security, to admit that ‘some changes have to be made’ and that benefits will have to be reduced is a total and complete sell out of everything that AARP said it stood for. Social Security is NOT broke. Minor tweaks may be necessary to continue normal benefits into the foreseeable future. Removing the cap on Social Security contributions and NOT continuing the ‘payroll tax holiday’ will go a long way to keeping social Security solvent well into the future. The ONLY reason that Social Security is even considered part of the deficit is because Congress has taken our contributions and spent them and now wants to break the covenant they made with us, the workers, and not bother to pay back what they borrowed from us.
If AARP does not actively and strongly oppose ANY changes that will reduce benefits to existing or future Social Security recipients, it will show itself to be nothing more than yet another lying, profit seeking, corpratocracy – no different than Monsanto, Enron, or Goldman Sacks. You are supposed to be fighting FOR us, not selling us out to the right wing plutocracy. The rich don’t need another billion or so each, but a small reduction to our Social Security checks makes a HUGE difference to us and our quality of life. We’ve got our doughnut holes, and our ‘no cost of living this year’. We've got the government telling us that there is no inflation because they no longer factor the cost of food into the Consumer Price Index. We don’t need the government and the AARP telling us the WE need to make sacrifices so that the rich can get richer!