AARP’s Attacks are Misleading

AARP’s deliberately misleading attacks on President Bush’s proposals to make Social Security work for this and every generation are disgraceful.

Dave Krieg’s letter to the editor on June 11 was nothing more than regurgitated talking points, distributed to AARP’s membership for the sole purpose of scaring seniors. In fact, Sunday’s Janesville Gazette contained the identical letter from a Mr. Wilkinson. The AARP’s campaign of fear should not be tolerated.

To that end, our organization, FreedomWorks, has launched a Web site exposing AARP’s scare tactics and fear-mongering, called Take Back AARP at www.takebackaarp. com.

Mr. Bush has gone to great lengths to assure seniors that they will be unaffected by any reform of this critical program, but yet AARP still continues to spread lies about personal retirement accounts.

They refuse to acknowledge the staggering long-term liabilities of the program and claim that “tweaks” and “minor adjustments” can fix whatever ails Social Security. With nearly $10 trillion (nearly triple the current national debt) in unfunded obligations, “tweaks” and “minor adjustments” will mean tax increases to over 20 percent of future workers’ paychecks and benefit cuts that will translate to certain destitution for those who have been unable to save in AARP’s mutual fund offerings or have access to pensions.

Social Security’s challenges need to be addressed now — and hiding our heads in the sand, ignoring the problem and asking tomorrow’s workers to bear the burden is wrong, and AARP should be ashamed of their tactics!

(Cameron Sholty is Wisconsin state director of FreedomWorks: CSE and Empower America. FreedomWorks is a national organization fighting for lower taxes and less government.)