PrairiePundit

Washington Examiner Editorial: It is clear that President Obama inflicted massive damage on his personal credibility among most Americans with his three false promises on Obamacare: you can keep your health insurance plan if you like it, you can keep your doctor if you want to, and you will save $2,500 a year. Only about a third of respondents to the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal survey give him “high marks for being honest and straightforward.” As Democratic pollster Fred Yang explained: “Make no mistake, the president has been weighed down by one issue: his health care law.” But Obama is not the only one to blame for the Obamacare nightmare. As Politico reported in 2009, it was the Herndon Alliance that came up with the idea of promising people they could keep their insurance plans and doctors so they wouldn't feel threatened by Obamacare. The Herndon Alliance is a Democratic messaging strategy group that leads a coalition of liberal advocacy groups. According to Politico, “Wh...

Erick Erickson: We know the AARP is typically left-leaning and sided with the Obama Administration on Obamacare and other policies that will wind up hurting seniors. But now it seems they’re siding with the far-left environmental movement to put people out of work and raise energy prices — something that has a direct effect on seniors with fixed incomes. The AARP and Sierra Club worked together to stall nuclear energy legislation in Iowa. They claimed the legislation would hurt seniors when, in reality, the legislation would have incentivized low cost nuclear energy production in Iowa. The AARP joined with the Sierra Club in Mississippi too . The issue was different, but the operation was the same. The environmental group couldn’t get its way so it brought in the AARP to scare seniors, who in turn called legislators. They did it in New York and North Carolina and Virginia among others. Each time, as the Sierra Club fell behind in its goals, it picked up the blue hair phone, calle...

NY Times: With a Major Push, AARP Returns to a Hard Line Against Cuts in Benefits AARP has returned to a hard-line position of opposing any Medicare or Social Security cutbacks and is waging a major campaign, partly to prove its worth to members. This is not about AARP looking out for current beneficiaries of entitlements.  It is about them selling their products to future generations who are unlikely to have those same benefits because they are unsustainable.  Nothing AARP is pushing will make any difference to those of us already receiving Social Security. What it will do is make the situation worse for the young people who will have to pay ever more of their income into the program even though it is likely they will receive even less.  AARP has its business interest at heart.  It makes millions off of selling its products and its brand.  It should not be seen as representing the interest of seniors.

Opinion Journal: ... Largely unreported, however, was the applause Mr. Ryan received. That came in response to his criticism of ObamaCare's Independent Payment Advisory Board, the 15 "unaccountable bureaucrats" empowered under the Affordable Care Act to make cuts to Medicare that Mr. Ryan rightly said will "jeopardize access to care." The payment board is largely shielded from Congressional review precisely so it can ration care with little democratic oversight. This is how Mr. Obama will rein in Medicare costs—whether seniors like it or not.  The Wisconsin Congressman was also cheered for his promise that his Medicare premium-support reform would "force insurance companies to compete against each other to better serve seniors, with more help for the poor and the sick—and less help for the wealthy."  Perhaps most striking, Mr. Ryan even earned some applause when he discussed Social Security reform, including "slightly raising the retirement...

Kimberley Strassel: When Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan address the AARP on Friday, good manners will no doubt keep them from asking this question: How can that lobby claim to speak for American seniors given its partisan role in passing ObamaCare? Thanks to just-released emails from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, we now know that AARP worked through 2009-10 as an extension of a Democratic White House, toiling daily to pass a health bill that slashes $716 billion from Medicare, strips seniors of choice, and sets the stage for rationing. We know that despite AARP's awareness that its seniors overwhelmingly opposed the bill, the "nonpartisan membership organization" chose to serve the president's agenda. The 71 pages of emails show an AARP management taking orders from the White House, scripting the president's talking points, working to keep its board "in line," and pledging fealty to "the cause." Seniors deserve to know all this, as AAR...

The Ticket: AARP bristles at new Obama ad on Medicare   The ad suggest support for Obama's stand on Medicare and social Security.  It is kind of funny they object, since they did support Obamacare which made the Medicare cuts.  That support cost the organization with several members canceling their association with the organization.

Robert Bluey: An 18-month congressional investigation into AARP reveals that the organization stands to make more than $1 billion over the next 10 years from Obamacare , a law the seniors lobby supported despite opposition among its core constituency. AARP, which operates as a tax-exempt organization in Washington, would profit from an increase in its insurance business, specifically from the sale of Medicare products to older Americans. The lucrative business has already transformed AARP into an insurance powerhouse. If it were a for-profit business, AARP would rank as the sixth-largest insurance company in America with profits of $427 million in 2009. AARP’s revenues exploded following passage of the Medicare Part D law during the Bush administration and will continue to grow as a result of Obamacare, according the House Ways and Means Committee report . That’s because an estimated 7 million seniors will lose Medicare Advantage plans — a consequence of Obamacare — and...

Time: Many observers are puzzled by the level of anger and vitriol senior citizens have been directing toward their besieged elected representatives during recent health-care town halls. But no one can be more surprised, or put in a more uncomfortable position, than the organization that supposedly represents their interests, AARP. The 40 million–member advocacy group, after all, signed on early as a key supporter of President Obama 's health-care-reform plan, and now it finds itself on the defensive, scrambling to win back much of its own membership. "A year ago, it seemed obvious that AARP would be for health reform ," says the group's legislative-policy director David Certner. "Our membership as far as we could tell was quite ginned up about health-care reform." (See TIME's guide to understanding the health-care debate.) Since then, members' views have apparently shifted. At least 60,000 AARP members quit the organization between...

Washington Times: If there is anyone or anything President Obama cannot afford to offend in his battle to overhaul the nation's health care system, it is the powerful seniors lobby, AARP. Perhaps that is why the White House was so quick to backpedal Wednesday after Mr. Obama mistakenly claimed that the organization, with its tens of millions of politically active members, had already signed on to his plan. Mr. Obama drew a forceful rejoinder from the group, the nation's largest organization for retirees, when he said during a town-hall meeting Tuesday in New Hampshire that it was endorsing his health care reform proposal. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged the error Wednesday but said Mr. Obama was not trying to mislead anyone. That the AARP so forcefully knocked down the claim of support shows the group is wary of being used as a political football. Leaders on both sides of the debate are well aware that seniors have the power to help push through a health...