Tag Archives for U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy

Seniors Must Educate Themselves to Push for Political Policy Reforms   

Published in the Pawtucket Times on July 22, 2002

Did you go to the Bristol 4th of July parade?

Or perhaps were you one of hundreds of people who gathered at Slater Mill Historic Site to hear U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy’s announce his bid for re-election.

If you attended one of these events or one of the hundreds of others scattered throughout the Ocean State, you probably ended up meeting gubernatorial, legislative, statewide or congressional candidates who were seeking high visibility with voters and potential votes from old friends and new acquaintances.

The clock is ticking.

With about seven weeks before the Sept. 10 primary, Rhode Island political candidates are scrambling to fill up their calendars with the dates of hundreds of “must-attend” events.

Political wisdom tells us that these candidates are more responsive to attending coffees, festivals and events that will attract older voters. This is because seniors as a group tend to get to the polls more often than other younger demographic groups. Years of research on voting trends bear this out.

According to the Bureau of the Census, in the 1996 presidential election, voter turnout among Americans 65 and older was 67 percent, only 10 percent lower than their registration rate of 77 percent. In that presidential election cycle, voter registration and turnout for Americans 50 and over was about the same as for Americans over age 65 (64.4 percent). Yet only 31 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 20 cast a vote in the presidential election of 1996.

Can this trend take hold for the 2002 Rhode Island elections? You bet.

The question is – are federal and state policy makers prepared to confront the changes that will occur with an aging America?

In the next Congress, both Republican and Democratic leadership must work closely together to develop sound aging policy initiatives.

Federal lawmakers must quickly come to grips with how to assist seniors to pay for costly long-term care while ensuring quality services are provided.  They must continue their efforts to hammer out a bipartisan law to make pharmaceutical drugs more affordable and to keep both Medicare and Socially Security financially solvent.

At the state level, the Gray Panthers of Rhode Island working in collaboration with the Rhode Island Forum on Aging and the Rhode Island Minority Elder Task Force, move to educate senior voters about state and federal aging issues. Funded by the Rhode Island Foundation, the Senior Agenda/Election 2002 project will identify priority state and federal aging issues, solicit candidate positions through a questionnaire and hold four regional forums to further discuss positions.

Become an educated voter. Learn more about the aging issues of important to you by carefully reading the political candidate’s positions in the written materials to be made available to you by the Senior Agenda/Election 2002 project.

At coffees, festivals and political events that you attend before the September primary and up to the November election, tell any gubernatorial, statewide or legislative candidates you meet to make further reforms net year to the state’s pharmaceutical program (RIPAE). Tell them about the need for assisted living facilities for moderate and low-income seniors and affordable housing options for frail and low-income seniors.

With the backdrop of the November election, Rhode Island lawmakers and Congress must continue their efforts to develop and implement programs and services especially geared to an aging society.

Aging as a policy and political issue will ultimately have an impact on every generation from today’s seniors, their aging baby boomers children, and finally to their young grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Being an educated voter, especially one who consistently votes, is likely to gain points with a political candidate and with those who ultimately are elected to office.

Presidential Commission Kicks off Social Security Reform Debate

Published in Pawtucket Times on December 17, 2001

Amid the nation mobilizing for a global fight against terrorism, a sliding economy with a rising unemployment rate, the President’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security last week released its bipartisan plan to fix the ailing Social Security program.

With elections looming next year, Congress will be forced to turn it attention to politically sticky domestic issue, how to modernize and restore the fiscal soundness of the Social Security program.

Finishing up its seven months of work, the 16-member Presidential Commission, divided evenly among Democrats and Republican, voted unanimously to sent its 165-page final report in draft form to the Bush White House. Two days after the panel released its report, House Republicans threw two bills into the legislative hopper, mirroring several of the recommended approaches.  The Social Security debate has begun.

While the Commission estimates that it will cost at least $2 trillion to revamp Social Security, it does not identify where the funds will come from.

Specifically, three approaches were suggested by the federal panel as a way of bringing reforms to the Social Security program. All involved the creation of voluntary personal accounts with a premise that workers investing in these accounts would ultimately receive higher retirement benefits by their investing in the social market.  Meanwhile, two plans seek provide better retirement benefits by their investing in the stock market.  Meanwhile, two plans seek to provide better benefits to low-income workers. All plans would seek to restore the fiscal stability of Social Security.

Senior advocacy groups are now weighting in on this highly visible and controversial policy issue that will likely become a key election issue next year. “None of the three draft plans put forward by the Commission today achieves the goal set out by the President, closing the gap in the program’s solvency over the next 75 years. None of the plans explain how it will achieve solvency. These plans do not change the fact that private accounts expose future beneficiaries to unnecessary risk and widely varying outcomes in retirement security,” charges Max Richtman, executive director of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

Furthermore, with the push to privatization through individual accounts, the Commission does not address the issue of the impact to the existing Social Security program if moderate and higher-wage earners pull their money out of the  system, states Richtman, stressing that the Commission does not see to have considered the potential impact of such an adverse selection on the stability of the program.

“With privatization, the devel is always in the details, and the Commission has failed to provide adequate details,” Richtman adds. ”They have not provided the nuts and boots of how the plans would work and how they would affect real people.”

According to AARP CEO William Novelli, a number of questions remain unanswered by the Commission report, specifically, “the long-term financing of benefit guarantees, particularly if current budget projects and market rates of return prove to be overly optimistic.”

When the Social Security debate begins, Novelli calls for other reform proposals to be considered, such a diversifying the Social Security Trust Funds’ investments by including federally-backed debt instruments, along with raising the wage base for payroll taxes and adding newly hired state and municipal employees to the program.

U.S. Rep. T. Matsu (D-CA), Ranking Member of the Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee agrees with the concerns of senior advocates. Restoring solvency of the Social Security program by workers investing part of their payroll tax in the stock market is a flawed approach and not the best strategy to  restore the fiscal integrity of the Social Security program, he says.

Privatization of Social Security would either require benefit cuts or a large infusion of federal dollars, warns U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), who serves on the House Appropriations Committee and sits as a member of the House Aging Caucus.

The Rhode Island Democrat who gives the Commission report a thumbs-down, states, “There is no question that we need to encourage American’s to save more for retirement, but while we do this, we should not throw the ‘baby out with the bath water’ by raising the retirement age, diverting the Social Security Trust Fund into privatization schemes or cutting benefits to seniors.” The four-term Congressman, whose legislative district has a large elderly constituency plans to make Social Security reform a key for his campaign in the upcoming elections next year.

Jeff Neal, a spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), tells All About Seniors that the senator does not necessary support or oppose some amount of privatization. “No amazingly specific proposal has come forward, been debated or has been thoroughly analyzed yet, Neal says. “Until that happens, it is impossible to determine if it is a good idea or not.”

Neal adds that Sen. Chafee believes that all the Democratic concerns need to be debated and resolved before Congress goes forward with any plan. “Democratic talking points look at the Commission work as a very simplistic level. Social Security is possible, besides the Medicare program, the most complex federal program, and a great deal of debate and input from both sides will be needed to tackle the solvency issue,” he says.

“Rhode Islanders need to step up and take credit for being leaders in the best social reform, notably Medicare,” urges AARP Executive Director Kathleen S. Connell. The late Democratic Congressman John Fogery and Aime J. Forand were the moving forces to create the is key federal program to protect the health and well-being of America’s seniors. “It is up to the current Rhode Island delegation to pick up the torch and lead the efforts to enact meaningful legislation to preserve and protect the Social Security program.”