Tag Archives for U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee

Delegates Head to D.C.

Published in Senior Digest on December 2005

Forty-seven years ago, Rhode Island Congressman John Fogarty successfully pushed legislation through Congress to create a national conference on aging issues. As a result of his forethought, the fifth White House Conference on Aging (WHCoA) will be held this month.

Scheduled every 10 years this nationwide citizens’ forum focuses public attention on aging issues and consolidates all the policy recommendations originating from the WHOCoA into a report sent to the president and Congress.

According to WHCoA staff, leading up to this conference scheduled for Dec. 11-14, there have been approximately 400 local, state and national events held across the nation, involving more than 130,000 people. The events included WHCoA listening sessions, solution forums, mini-conferences and independent aging agenda events.

The theme for the 2005 WHCoA is “The Booming Dynamics of Aging: From Awareness to Action.” The them reflects the changing face of aging in America. The conference, mandated by the Older Americans Act, focuses on the interests and needs of current seniors as well as the 78 million baby boomers who will begin to turn 60 in 2006. (Rhode Island is home to more than 152,000 seniors who are 65 and older and has the sixth highest concentration of people in this age category in the nation).

Corinne Calise Russo, director of the state Department of Elderly Affairs (DEA) said her staff gathered information about the concerns of seniors by conducting listening sessions during May and June to in Newport, Cranston, Wakefield and Woonsocket.  Russo said 150 seniors attended.

There were seven members of the Rhode Island delegation attending the WHCoA. Russo was appointed to attend the upcoming conference by Gov. Donald Carcieri. She said her experience as a 1995 delegate was “very exciting” and that she is looking forward to going back to D.C>

Other delegates are: Kathleen Connell, director of AARP Rhode Island appointed by U.S. Sen. Jack Reed; Joan Crawley, director of the Leon A. Mathieu Senior Center in Pawtucket appointed by Congressman Patrick Kennedy :William Finelli, a retired teacher and librarian appointed by appointed by U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee; Ann Gardella, chairwoman of the state Commission on Aging appointed by Gov. Carcieri;  Angelo Rotella, chairman of the American Health Care Association and a nursing home owner, appointed by Congressman James Langevin; and Dr. Terrie Fox Wetle, associate dean for public health and policy at Brown Unversity and policy at Brown University; appointed by WHCoA officials.

According to Russo, the grassroots input gathered at the four listening sessions was hammered out into nine policy recommendations at a resolution development workshop in September. The 12-page  document was forwarded to the WHCoA policy committee charged with planning the agenda for the conference. That committee will bring 50  resolutions gathered from pre-WHCoA events to the conference floor for a vote.

“The submitted resolutions would have to impact the largest number of seniors and also translate into issues that would affect a large number of baby boomers,” Russo noted.  She believes that some of Rhode Island’s resolutions have a good chance of being selected for consideration by the delegates.

“It is probably the one opportunity in a 10-year period of time that local advocates and seniors from Rhode Island can provide input that could become national policy that could effect future generations of seniors,” the DEA director said.

Russo says that it is important to plan for future generations of people who will choose to remain at home for the rest of their lives. She noted that the No. 1 priority that came out of Rhode Island’s listening sessions was the need to provide for a continuum of care to keep older persons in the community.

Other resolutions include a call for increased access to employment opportunities for seniors, supporting caregivers, adequate funding for chronic disease management programs with an emphasis on prevention and maintaining the independence of older disabled adults by providing programs and services to allow them to successfully “age in place.”

In 1995, the number of delegates was almost double the umber that will be attending the 2005 WHCoA. But Russo has no concerns that this reduction of delegates will diminish seniors’ input and the quality of recommendations that come out of the conference. “Every state this year was concerned with the reduction of delegates,” she said, noting that what it ultimately did was provide the opportunity to gain input form older people and baby boomers via the listening sessions.

Connell does not believe that the WHCoA report will sit on a dusty shelf in federal agencies or in the offices of bureaucrats.

“Much of the future policy direction of the country will be affected by this final report. Because of this, the report carriers the weight of its congressional mandate,” she said.

State Wants its Resolution Debated in Washington

The state Department of Elderly Affairs (DEA) submitted nine resolutions to the White House Conference on Aging Policy Committee. It is hoped that the Policy Committee will recommend some of the resolutions for consideration during the conference. The resolution for national policies that:

  1. Establish standards for Medicaid coverage of both facility-based and community-based services; long-term care insurance portability; incentives for excellent care; federal support for assisted technology; an aggressive campaign to educate employers, caregivers and the public about community-based health care and social service options; state and federal coordination of services.
  2. Encourage employees through incentives to: hire and retain older workers; offer flexible work schedules; allow older workers to buy into benefits and adopt attitudes that value the older workers.
  3. Support proactive and informed retirement and long-term care planning for seniors and caregivers, including tax incentives for professionals who look after or provide services to the elderly.
  4. Establish comprehensive care programs for diverse elders, including education about prevention; accessible immunizations, screenings and treatments without regard to ability to pay; nontraditional culture-specific treatments; culturally sensitive end of life care; and an initiative to require that cultural proficiency be included in basic medical education.
  5. Encourage a proactive approach to the conversation within families regarding the preferences and responsibilities of care giving; mandate the Family Medical Leave Act for all workplaces; support caregivers through tax breaks and other financial incentives; design services that are more sensitive to the needs of caregivers.
  6. Promote flexibility and innovation in services, provide adequate same-day urgent medical transportation; support volunteer driver programs; expand community options such as delivery services and coordinated group trips to consumer destinations; and improve coordination of exiting public transportation.
  7. Address education about healthy lifestyles , which government should support along with chronic disease management. The support should include subsidized gym members and  home adaptation.
  8. Form a task force to review and revise standards of the Adults with Disabilities Act (ADA) to more closely reflect the needs of disabled adults; promote aggressive publicity and posting of ADA standards.
  9. Develop a response to housing needs for the next three decades that will include education of caregivers and baby boomers about housing options and the need for long-term financial planning; incentives for universal design to support aging in place, proximity to services; a commitment to esthetics and opportunities for social interaction.

Bush will fight to Privatize Social Security

Published in Senior Digest on January 2005

The Bush administration and aging groups are about to battle over the privatization of Social Security.

More than four years ago, the 16-member Presidential Commission divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats, voted unanimously to send its 165-page final report to the Bush White House. The charge of the commission was to develop a road map to reform the nation’s Social Security program.

With the commission kicking off the Social Security reform debate by releasing this report in December 2001, the federal panel called for three approaches to change the 70-year-old federal program.  All the recommendations involved personal accounts, with a premise that workers’ investments would yield higher retirement benefits.

With President Bush keeping control of the White House and the GOP retaining control of Congress, Social Security is again under attack and the debate is expected to heat up.

According to recent Business Week On-Line article by Richard S. Dunham, Bush will begin to sell the partial privatization of Social Security by launching a “marketing blitz.”

“Advisors say the president, who sees private accounts as essential to his ownership society agenda, is determined to make retirement reform his top domestic priority for 2005,” Dunham wrote.

According to Dunham, Bush’s “three-phase sales plan” started with his Dec. 12 radio address Bush followed by calling for privatization of Social Security at his economic summit on Dec. 16.

Phase Two, a $ 40 million broadcast advertising campaign underwritten by nation’s corporations will tout the economic benefits of allowing workers to put a portion of their payroll taxes into investment accounts and the negative impact of inaction.  Dunham wrote Phase Three would give the public the specifics.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that Bush had his work cut out for him to sell the public. Results showed people are skeptical about any changes to Social Security, and that the public believes it is a bad idea to let workers risk their Social Security taxes in the stock market.

Critics are quick to pounce on Bush for his calls for radical changes to Social Security. They charge that the securities industry which heavily supported Republican candidates in the last election, would benefit financially under the president’s plan.

“Wall Street and big business are seated at the conference table-where are the voices of seniors?” asked Barbara Kennelly, president and chief executive officer of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

“This seems like a repeal of the president’s Social  Security Commission, where privatization wasn’t debated. It was a foregone conclusion – and that is a sure path to bad public policy,” she said in a prepared statement released after the White Houe Economic Conference.

Furthermore, Kennelly said that “a carefully orchestrated conference can’t hide the fact that privatizing Social Security may result in cuts in benefits and will dismantle Social Security, while dramatically increasing our nation’s debt.”

Just blocks away at the National Press Club, a diverse coalition of groups held a press conference on the day of Bush’s economic summit. The assembled groups, including the AFL-CIO, NAACP, National Organization for Women (NOW), disability groups, and the Alliance for Retired Americans, announced their strong opposition to Bush plan.

Those groups are part of the Campaign for America’s Future, which intends to mobilize opposition in every congressional district throughout the nation to Save Social Security benefits that would be slashed by the president’s plan.

At the news conference, George J. Kourpias, president of the 3 million plus member Alliance for Retired Americans,” told the crowd that the Social Security system is not broke or in the dire trouble Bush would have American’s believe.

“Let me remind those naysayers who conspired not to save Social Security but to bury it, that Social Security hasn’t missed a paycheck in almost 70  years, Kourpias said.

“With some changes designed to strengthen and secure the program, Social Security is well positioned to keep delivering monthly checks to millions of Americans for decades to come.”

Adds, NOW President Kim Gandy, “Social Security is not in trouble. George Bush is in trouble. More than half of elderly women would live in poverty without the benefits of this guaranteed insurance program. This destructive proposal is effectively economic violence against women- he’s risking our livelihoods to satisfy Wall Street donors and corporate cronies.

AARP President Marie Smith is also weighing in on the privatization issue by placing an open letter to 33 million plus members, on the nonprofit group’s Web site

Smith counters Bush’s statements that Social Security is in danger of going broke. Changes do not have to be drastic, she says. “Creating private accounts would only weaken Social Security and put benefits at risk for future generations.”

Smith estates that a new Social Security system would cost the nation as much as $2 trillion or more in benefit cuts new taxes or more debt.

In Rhode Island, a quick poll of the state’s Democratic U.S. senators and congressmen indicate that they oppose Bush’s retirement policy gamble. (Republican U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee’s position could not be obtained). While each oppose the concept of privatization, the lawmakers are waiting to see the specific legislative proposals that will be introduced.

But even with Bush pushing for a major Social Security overhaul, only a bipartisan coalition of congressional lawmakers can either strengthen the existing Social Security program or scrap it through privatization.

It is crucial for seniors to send a message to Bush and the Republican congressional leadership that it’s time to go back to the drawing board to examine other approaches to strengthen America’s most popular domestic program.