“Our ideology is big!”
An AARP Lobbyist
From modest and ethical beginnings the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has emerged as one of the country’s richest, most powerful and perhaps most doctrinaire lobbies.
Founded in 1958 by the 72 year-old head of the National Retired Teachers Association and a creative insurance executive the AARP’s goal was one of self-help for the elderly, enabling them to obtain private health insurance.
As late as 1965, with membership at 750,000, its founder reported, AARP held “no meetings to bewail the hardships of old age, nor to formulate pressure programs, nor to stress political strengths of older folks, nor to urge government subsidy.”
Shortly thereafter, as the Great Society took root, the AARP assumed a new role. With its most influential members coming from the teachers union movement, long a large welfare state champion, the AARP began crusading to create and expand programs for the elderly.
By 1991, the AARP membership rolls had swelled to 34 million, half of the nation’s over-50 population. Its $300 million annual operating budget was generated from membership dues, health insurance royalties, government grants and subsidies and an assortment of related businesses activities marketed to older Americans.
While the AARP’s status as a nonprofit prohibits partisan political activity, it is far from neutral with one of the nation’s most ambitious and most costly social agendas.
In its 400-page manifesto, “Toward a Just and Caring Society”, the AARP calls for more than 100 increases in spending and taxes. Their most aggressive efforts are targeted toward the big entitlements of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and some form of nationalized health care reform. Spending increases advocated in these areas alone total close to $900 billion annually by 2003.
Paying for these programs while concurrently trimming the deficit by $653 billion over same period relies primarily on new taxes and higher tax rates!
With estimated cash reserves of $600 million, a membership boasting half the nation’s discretionary income and comprising the one-third of the electorate which predictably votes, the AARP is a lobby to be reckoned with and is often perceived as being able to affect the outcome of elections … and thus legislation.
The AARP has marketed itself as a grass-roots, benevolent watch dog, fighting for the causes surfaced by its membership through some 3,600 local chapters. Appearances, in this case, are deceptive.
According to a National Taxpayers Union Foundation study, the AARP’s various “advisory committees and governing boards are carefully vetted to weed out independent thinkers and ideological deviationists.” A former Executive Directors reported, the AARP’s “Board is directed by the Washington staffers”, most of whom are dedicated statists. Its bylaws effectively enshrine its lobbyists authoritarian powers over the organization, down to the local chapters.
Members face expulsion for such heresies as revealing other member names or “statement or conduct deemed by the Board … to be detrimental to the best interests of the Association, or any of its services …” Freedom of expression is unwelcomed.
While only an estimated 14% of its members enroll for lobbying activities, AARP’s understand only a tiny core of dedicated activists is necessary to influence public policy. When this cadre of letter writers is activated, Congressmen frequently perceive an enormous groundswell of opinion which may well be absent.
This was never more true than in 1988 when the Catastrophic Health Care Act was passed … and then repealed when an incensed membership finally defied their lobbyists and forced them to support a subsequent repeal of the ill-conceived legislation.
The AARP’s “central committee” also plays with disinformation and half-truths. It can, thereby, arouse or soothe membership fears … or spur Congress to act or refrain from action, absent the facts.
In the words of John Rother, the organization’s chief lobbyist, “We’re not here just to report the public opinion of members … we’ve studied this and we have a more educated, informed judgement to offer you (AARP’s members).”
Such arrogance is both pervasive and dangerous. This paternalistic attitude reinforces AARP staff beliefs deficits are preferable to the unknown consequences of fiscal responsibility.
Unfortunately, neither evolutionary reform nor dramatic revolt within the AARP is likely or perhaps even possible. Nor, is there any prospect of a viable competitor. Regretfully, that leaves America’s rapidly expanding population of senior citizens with no credible advocate except an autocratic Association which appears to lack a moral commitment to either democratic processes or the nation’s future social and economic well-being.
I fully expect the “elder-police” to beat the Publisher’s Clearing House van to my door … demanding the return of my AARP card thus denying me the panoply of travel-related and other discounts its membership provides. On second thought, maybe I’ll beat them to the punch.
