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Elderly to Battle Against Benefits Curbs

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Times Staff Writer

A coalition of groups representing the elderly is planning a nationwide campaign to lobby 174 senators and representatives in their home states during this week’s congressional recess to protest the curb on Social Security cost-of-living increases proposed last week by President Reagan and leading Senate Republicans.

“The grass roots is going to express itself in no uncertain terms,” Arthur S. Flemming, a coordinator of the campaign, said at a news conference Tuesday. “People feel this is a gut issue. It threatens their very existence.”

The Social Security proposal promises to be one of the most controversial elements of the compromise budget plan that is expected to be debated by the Senate during the week of April 22. It would limit Social Security recipients’ cost-of-living increase to inflation minus 2 percentage points, with a guaranteed increase of at least 2%.

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By Senate Republican estimates, it would cut Social Security outlays next year by $2.8 billion from the levels expected under current law, which allows an increase equal to the inflation rate, if inflation exceeds 3%.

Groups representing the elderly have charged that the average recipient would lose $593 in Social Security benefits and $125 in Medicare over the next three years under the budget package.

The package, which includes scores of cuts aimed at slashing next year’s projected $227-billion deficit by $52 billion, would increase the premiums and deductibles paid by Medicare recipients. That, Flemming said, amounts to forcing some of them “to choose between (buying) medicine or food and energy.”

Flemming, who was secretary of health, education and welfare during the Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration and now is chairman of a coalition known as Save Our Security, said that the groups seeking to meet with the lawmakers will present them with birthday cakes to mark the 50th anniversary of Social Security and the 20th of Medicare.

He said that their message will be: “You can’t have our cake and cut it, too.” They will also ask the lawmakers, who include 19 California representatives and Republican Sen. Pete Wilson, to sign a “birthday pledge” to “vote against any cut, freeze or change” in Social Security cost-of-living increases.

“We think we have a pretty good chance of winning,” Flemming said.

Social Security has been a troublesome issue for the Administration in the past. Reagan proposed cutting the system in 1981 to solve its financial problems, then retracted his suggestion in the face of widespread criticism. Despite the reversal, Democrats were able to turn the issue into a potent weapon against Republicans in the 1982 midterm congressional elections, in which Democrats picked up 26 House seats.

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Former Rep. Barber B. Conable Jr. (R-N.Y.), who was ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee until his retirement from Congress this year, warned Tuesday at a seminar for lobbyists and reporters that the Social Security plan is “foolish. It was very bad politically.”

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