Remember last summer when AARP's policy chief John Rother told the Wall Street Journal that the organization would maybe accept cuts to Social Security in some sort of grand bargain, and then the organization spent the next weeks in damage control?
They might have to be winding up that damage control team, again. The organization, set to roll out a national, public "listening tour" on Social Security and Medicare next week, is also having a not-so-public, much smaller "salon" with some long-time foes of the program.
An AARP invitation to a secret "Relaxed and Robust Evening of 'Salon Style' Conversation" to be held at a Capitol Hill home on March 27, obtained by The Huffington Post, indicates that the organization is still very much interested in a "grand-bargain" style deal that puts Social Security and Medicare cuts on the table.
"AARP is not pursuing any closed door deals or grand bargains," said an AARP spokeswoman. "Our main focus is hearing from our members, and all Americans, what they think about ways to strengthen Social Security and Medicare. That's precisely why we're launching 'You've Earned a Say.' We are interested in hearing from all sides and having civil discourse on these issues."
The list of invitees to the salon event includes a gallery of powerful Washington establishment figures who are on record favoring cuts to Social Security and Medicare. [...] Other listed invitees included business leaders and deficit hawks who have long argued for the cuts, including Tom Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, John Engler of the Business Roundtable group for corporate CEOs, and David Walker, a noted deficit alarmist and former head of the Government Accountability Office.
So here we go again, with the "hearing from all sides" with a "civil discourse" with the same crew whose only interest in Social Security is how to get the maximum amount of funds
out of it and into private accounts. Luckily, this year's salon (they've held several in recent years) appears to be a little less than well-organized. One of the advertised invitees, William A. Niskanen of the Cato Institute, died last year. Others, including Economic Policy Institute's Larry Mishel (the only strong Social Security defender on the list), Ezra Klein, and former Rep. J.C. Watts say they haven't actually received invitations.
Nonetheless, AARP's commitment to keeping Social Security and Medicare strong should be judged at least in part by the company the organization keeps (or says it intends to keep).