Aaron Woolf Announces Senior Votes Count! Endorsement, Sets Record Straight on Social Security and Medicare

Press Release

Today, Aaron Woolf announced that Senior Votes Count! has endorsed his campaign for Congress. Senior Votes Count! is the first organization to specifically focus on seniors and the electoral process and endorsed Woolf for Congress because of his dedication to preserving and protecting Social Security and Medicare. Woolf is also setting the record straight on the distinct contrast between his plan to protect senior benefits and Elise Stefanik's inconsistent and dangerous record on these issues.

"Millions of Americans every year rely on Social Security and Medicare for a safe and dignified retirement," Woolf said. "We must protect these programs without cutting benefits or postponing them for any hardworking American. Instead, we can ensure the solvency of each by growing the economy and ensuring everyone pays their fair share. Upstate New York and North Country voters deserve a representative who won't waiver in his commitment to preserving Social Security and Medicare."

Last week, Woolf joined musician Jon "Bowzer" Bauman from Sha Na Na on a visit to the David & Helen Getman Memorial Home. At the Gloversville center, Bowzer announced that Senior Votes Count! is endorsing Woolf for Congress. Woolf talked to seniors about preserving Medicare and Social Security; and fighting Washington Republican plans to privatize the programs. Stefanik, on the other hand, failed to even return the Senior Votes Count!'s questionnaire. She also has played a key role in attacking the future of both Social Security and Medicare.

First, she was Policy Director of the 2012 Republican National Convention Platform Committee that called for the privatization of Social Security and Medicare--a record which she keeps running from.

Elise Stefanik is listed on the Committee's website as "Policy Director," second only to the Executive Director and above Editor Bill Gribbin. Elise Stefanik was a senior director of the committee who must stand by the policies that she played a vital role in crafting.

In 2012, she was the Debate Prep Director for Paul Ryan in which her job was to coach him in how to defend his plan that also called for ending the Medicare guarantee.

On April 15, Stefanik refused to take a position on Paul Ryan's plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program, instead saying that she would "have to study it first." This is a dubious claim since it was her job in 2012 to coach Ryan on how to defend his proposals.

On August 19, she evaded the question again, offering the same excuse that she would have to first study Paul Ryan's plan. 140 days and counting, and we're still waiting for an answer. 140 days and counting should also be enough time for a Harvard graduate to study the effects of cutting Medicare benefits for millions of hardworking Americans.

Last week, Woolf for Congress released an online clock that counts the seconds, minutes, hours, and days that Stefanik has ducked and hid from answering whether or not she supports her mentor Paul Ryan's plan to end the Medicare guarantee.

Recently, Stefanik came out in support of raising the retirement age. She also came out in support of using chained CPI, a plan that would cut benefits for seniors. At the time, she also refused to say who would be affected.

She then called a press conference to discuss Social Security during which Stefanik refused to answer specifics about her plan to raise the retirement age and abruptly left her own press conference.

And now Elise Stefanik is again trying to backtrack on making immediate cuts to senior benefits, but once again refuses to say she doesn't support Paul Ryan's plan to end the Medicare guarantee. Confusing and misleading, isn't it?

By comparison, Woolf understands that we don't have a Social Security crisis: we have a retirement crisis. Seniors were promised a three legged stool for a secure retirement: savings, a defined pension plan, and Social Security. But Americans aren't saving as much as they used to because wages have stagnated while the cost of living has increased over the decades. And companies have forgone defined pension plans for less reliable 401Ks. That means that the only leg still standing is Social Security.

As a result, Social Security lifted 15 million seniors out of poverty in 2012. In fact, nearly 2/3 of American seniors depend on Social Security for more than half of their income. And a third of Americans depend on Social Security for at least two thirds of their retirement income.

"Aaron Woolf is absolutely correct," said Eric Kingson, professor of social work at Syracuse University and founding co-director of Social Security Works. "Cutting Social Security's earned benefits is the last thing our representatives in Congress should be advocating. They should not be trying to cut the benefits of middle aged and younger workers by raising the retirement age. They should not be cutting the benefits of today's and tomorrow's old by pushing for a stingier cost-of-living adjustment, one that would guarantee that the longer someone lives, the less purchasing power their benefits would have. With two-thirds of working Americans under age 65 heading towards retirements in which they will be unable to maintain their standard of living, it's time that all candidates for congress, whether Democratic or Republican, sound the alarm, as Aaron Woolf is doing, that the nation faces a national retirement income crisis and that cutting Social Security will only make it worse."

That means that with Social Security solvent for another two decades, we not only don't have to make cuts--we shouldn't. Before the Great Recession, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) argued that "Because Social Security benefits rise with productivity, the cost of supporting the elderly will be higher in the future. With productivity rising so much more than total population, however, future generations will enjoy a vastly higher standard of living after fulfilling current promises for Social Security benefits." In order to put the United States back on this trajectory, we need to grow the economy and increase the money that is directly put into Social Security and the National Treasury.

This is backed up by the Center for American Progress (CAP), which released a study last week that concluded that population growth, "and its accompanying employment growth improves Social Security's long-term financial outlook." It also stressed that "Raising wage growth by lifting wages...brightens Social Security's long-term outlook."

CAP also cited the most recent Social Security Trustees' report that estimates that if the inflation-adjusted annual wage growth reached 1.76 percent (from the currently assumed 1.31 percent) it would improve the future of Social Security and cut its future deficit by 34.7 percent. It also predicted that a higher minimum wage would improve the future of Social Security as well.

That is why Woolf supports:

Increasing the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. Doing so would create 140,000 new jobs and generate $33 billion over just three years. That is because Americans would immediately have extra income to spend in their communities, helping local businesses grow and compete. Elise Stefanik has repeatedly said that she doesn't support raising the federal minimum wage; is now trying to backtrack from this stance; but still refuses to confirm her support one way or another.

Closing the gender wage gap with legislation like the Paycheck Fairness Act. A female full-time worker makes only 77 cents for every dollar that a man earns. This adds up to a yearly gap in wages of $10,805. Elise Stefanik, on the other hand, says she supports paycheck fairness but was the Policy Director of the 2012 Republican platform that explicitly excluded the Paycheck Fairness Act while the Democratic platform explicitly included the legislation.

Closing tax loopholes for millionaires, billionaires, Big Oil companies, and our richest corporations to shore up Social Security. This would generate billions of dollars that that the National Treasury could then use to help strengthen the Social Security Trust Fund in the long-run.

These general efforts are also supported by those on the right. For instance, frequent National Review contributor Fred Bauer wrote in the American Thinker that growing the economy and the middle class is essential to long term Social Security sustainability. Conservative Forbes writer Louis Woodhill agrees with this assertion, opining that "Social Security needs more substantial economic growth--not tax hikes, benefit cuts or increases in the retirement age. Opinion polls show that the voters understand this. They oppose changes in the Social Security program by wide margins. The question now is whether the Republican leadership can figure this out before they do something that would cost them dearly..." Woodhill concluded that "A sustained period of rapid economic growth…would, all by itself, restore Social Security's finances to robust health."

Woolf is also committed to protecting Medicare and doesn't believe we should make changes on the backs of the same citizens that the program was created to protect. Because Medicare will be solvent until 2030--four years later than was predicted by Medicare trustees last year--we don't have to. This growth in solvency is thanks to the recent slowdown in Medicare spending and a stronger economy that yields higher revenue through payroll tax contributions to the trust fund.

That is why we must first work to continue growing the economy and creating more jobs. Secondly, we have to work to restrain the growth in Medicare spending driven by Big Insurance Companies. And third, Medicare should be able to negotiate for the cost of prescription drugs. That would save the program billions of dollars. If Medicaid and the VA can save millions of dollars by negotiating for the cost of prescription drugs, Medicare should be able to do the same.

Finally, Stefanik continues to lie about Medicare cuts as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In truth, according to FactCheck.org,"The GOP talking point is misleading for several reasons: The Affordable Care Act doesn't slash $700 billion from the current Medicare budget; instead, this is a cut in the future growth of spending over a decade." As proof, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently said government payments to insurers in the Medicare Advantage program will increase .4 percent on average in 2015. The increase, CMS said, is slightly higher than what insurers had requested.

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