July 14th, 2011

The Washington Post reports:

First, AARP tried to convey disappointment. In May, the group launched a TV ad warning that Congress might try to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits as part of a deal to raise the national debt ceiling. “The country can do better,” it said.

Then, in June, it tried ridicule. Another TV ad hit Congress for pondering those cuts while the government spent money on such things as pickle research and experiments in which shrimp ran on treadmills.

That didn’t work either.

So AARP’s new tactic is more direct: veiled threats.

“Maybe we seem like an easy target” for Congress, a grandfather says in a TV ad the group launched Wednesday. “Until you realize there are 50 million of us.”

It’s still unclear what provisions might be included in a final deal to raise the debt limit, if a deal ever comes. But it’s obvious that reductions to Social Security and Medicare are still on the table — despite furious efforts by seniors groups to push them off.

That fact could reflect some decline in the influence of AARP, after its bruising intervention in the fight over health-care reform.

It also likely shows how thoroughly the debt-ceiling battle has scrambled Washington politics: With a global economic calamity predicted any day now, it may just be harder to scare people about anything else.

Advocates “can’t understand it,” said Josh Rosenblum, of the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, which wants Social Security to be removed from the debt-ceiling talks. “We have told the president, and told Congress, that every single poll that’s been taken [shows] folks don’t want benefit cuts. And yet they still seem to be willing to consider it.”

For the rest of the story, read The Washington Post