Nation’s Elderly Can Exert a Lot of Muscle : Citizens over 65 are demanding, and getting, what they want at all levels of government. They see it as their right, but a backlash may be emerging.

Weary White House and congressional negotiators emerged from marathon budget talks three weeks ago with a bipartisan deficit-reduction package that included a modest but potentially explosive provision: It would have required America’s 34 million Medicare beneficiaries to pay an average of $121.96 more a year for the popular program.

The bang came almost immediately. Within a few hours, senior citizens from all over the country were angrily calling their congressmen to protest. Less than a week later, despite backing by President Bush and congressional leaders of both parties, the entire budget plan went down to humiliating defeat on the House floor.

“Our office was flooded with calls--there’s nothing like Medicare,” a congressional aide says.

It wasn’t the first time. In 1988, lawmakers proudly passed a major Medicare expansion to provide unlimited days of hospital care and partial payment of drug bills for the elderly, but imposed a special tax requiring the more affluent among the elderly to pay for it. Although 60% of persons over 65 would have been completely exempt from the extra tax, the backlash was overwhelming. Last year, Congress repealed the whole plan.

But the impact isn’t just felt here in Washington. All over the country, Gray Power is proving its potency. In some communities, opposition by senior citizens has blocked approval of school-bond issues, which often require a two-thirds vote for passage.

Often, the elderly are demanding--and getting--special consideration. In Chicago, the president of the Cook County Board of Supervisors favors freezing the property taxes of seniors until they sell their homes. Another candidate has proposed a bill to permit senior citizens to buy gasoline from full-service pumps at self-service prices once a week.

Such examples have sparked a new debate over whether the elderly have acquired too muchpower. Although persons over 65 make up only 12% of the U.S. population, they have garnered a rapidly increasing share of federal spending over the past 20 years. And they wield enormous political clout--enough to sink a deficit-reduction package.

And this is just the start. Older Americans “are going to exert much greater clout in the future,” says elections expert Curtis Gans. The numbers of the elderly are growing and because they troop faithfully to the polls, “you can expect the influence of the older voter to continue and expand,” he says.

In Orange County, both parties recognize the political clout of such places as Leisure World in Laguna Hills, where voter turnout is almost always higher than the county average. Today, for instance, most of the statewide Republican ticket is scheduled to appear at an event there, drawn by voter loyalty.

“We have a high degree of political activity here,” said Marian Miller, former president of the Leisure World Republican Club. “They are very dedicated and very concerned about government.”

Older Americans are very vocal and well organized, and they vote in much higher percentages than most Americans. For example, senior citizens cast about 20% of the votes in presidential elections. And they are fiercely determined to keep what they regard as theirs by right.

The elderly lobby “is the 800-pound gorilla of American politics--the most powerful interest group in the country,” says Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Sacramento). “They have the instant ability to generate mail, and they are organized in every community in the country.”

Moreover, many regard their current benefits as an inalienable right--the result of a social contract between themselves and the government.

At Leisure World, a Silver Spring, Md., retirement community, Ernest DeFrancis, 75, fervently describes himself as a “card-carrying Republican” who is sincerely worried about excessive government spending.

But when it comes to Social Security and Medicare, DeFrancis feels differently: “I’ve supported this country for many years, and I feel I’m entitled to something for it,” he insists.

Meg Belanger, a widow, agrees. “If they raise Medicare, I’m going to go into orbit,” she declares.

May Provoke Backlash

But tiny ripples on the political waters suggest that a backlash may be emerging, particularly among younger taxpayers who must foot the bills.

“I’m not against Social Security or Medicare, but we’re sending retirement checks of $700 or $800 a month to millionaires and helping pay the medical bills of millionaires,” complains Karen Meredith, an Irving, Tex., accountant and founder of the American Assn. of Boomers, a new grass-roots group.

Meredith’s organization, a group of 10,000 modeled after the fabulously successful 32-million-member American Assn. of Retired Persons, wants to become the champion for the baby boom generation born between 1946 and 1964.

The boomers, many of whom fear they won’t be able to collect Social Security and Medicare when their turn comes, want to bring spending under control by linking Social Security and Medicare benefits to income, Meredith says. The group, which previously has recruited members solely by word-of-mouth, sent out its first test-mailing last month.

David Keating, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers’ Union, also questions how long the elderly can continue to get their way. Medicare and Social Security “are going to be unaffordable someday and the question is, what’s going to happen then?” he asks.

“The seniors groups say that any changes to reduce the growth of benefits is bad and shouldn’t be accepted,” Keating says, but “that kind of political strategy spells disaster for the country in the long run. It will bankrupt the country eventually. Something’s got to happen. You can’t pile more taxes on the economy.”

What concerns people like Meredith and Keating is that at current rates of spending, the Medicare program will run out of money by the year 2005. Long before that happens, Congress and the public will face the painful choices of curbing benefits, raising taxes, or some combination of both, to keep the popular program going.

Social Security is building up big surpluses, but these will be quickly exhausted when the huge baby boom population begins reaching retirement age after the year 2012. Suggestions that benefits be curbed now or tied to income is anathema to advocates of the elderly, who argue that the programs enjoy support precisely because they are a universal right.

“You worked for it, and you are entitled to it,” says Lawrence Smedley, executive director of the National Council of Senior Citizens, whose 1.2 million members include many union retirees.

“We would fight to the last breath” against efforts to set up an income test for receiving Medicare and Social Security benefits, Smedley argues.

The costs of those programs have skyrocketed during the past 20 years. In 1971, Social Security alone totaled $81.2 billion worth of benefits, while Medicare paid out a relatively paltry $22.5 billion. In 1990, those figures will total $192.8 billion and $93 billion respectively.

Monthly checks go to 28 million retired workers and their spouses, and 7 million survivors. The average retired worker gets $571 a month; the average couple receives $970. In 1975, benefits were linked to the cost of living, and are hiked automatically to keep up with inflation.

By almost any standard, Social Security has been the most successful anti-poverty program ever devised--freeing millions from the desperation of old-age poverty. Poverty among the elderly, which was 35.2% in 1959, has fallen to 12%--lower than the national figure of 13.1%.

Even so, there are wide variations in income levels among the elderly. Statistically, married couples between 65 and 75 enjoy the highest standard of living, typically receiving private pensions and interest from savings and investment to supplement their Social Security checks.

However, the vast majority of the 29 million Americans over the age of 65 earn less than $15,000 a year. Some 7 million men and 13 million women fall into this category. The median income of men over 65 was $13,107 in 1989. The figure for women was $7,656.

Poverty frequently stalks the elderly when they pass the age of 80. Husbands have died, savings are exhausted, and millions of widows exist on scant incomes. Millions of older women are living in poverty--defined as an income of less than $6,311 for a single person and $8,076 for a couple.

For the poor elderly, even a modest increase in the monthly premiums for the Medicare insurance that helps pay doctor bills would be a heavy economic burden.

“There are a lot of things they can cut out without bothering with Medicare and Social Security,” insists Esther Jackson, 75, a resident of NCBA Estates in Washington, run by the National Caucus and Center on Black Aging. “I’d have been dead four or five years ago if it hadn’t been for Medicare.”

“Why do they want to come down on the poor individual who has been working all their life, paid their dues to society?” says Sarah Alexander, joining other residents in the meeting room of the NCBA apartment project. Their average income is $6,500 a year.

“If they take any more from us, what are we going to have--nothing,” she says. “You can’t get blood out of a turnip. If I haven’t got it, they can’t get it.”

Residents at NCBA Estates pay a third of their income in return for a one-bedroom apartment and subsidized meals in the cafeteria. They enjoy a comparative bargain. A one-bedroom rental apartment in the neighborhood would cost between $600 and $700 a month.

John P. Parker has a powerful voice, but he takes large gulps of air between sentences because of his emphysema. He is only 64 but is eligible to live in NCBA Estates because of a disabled leg. “You know, of all the things they have down there and all, they can surely find something to cut back besides Medicare,” he says.

Margaret Thomas, another resident, agrees. If the government imposed a big raise in charges for Medicare coverage, “I’d just lay down and die,” she says. “We just live from payday to payday because our medicines are so high, our food is so high, our rent is high, our everything is high.”

“If you can’t go to the doctor, if you don’t have money, what else is there for you to do except die? (Medicare) is the only thing keeping us alive.”

To the relatively affluent condo owners of Leisure World in Maryland--where recent resale prices ranged from $49,000 to $265,000--as well as the near-poor residents at NCBA Estates, there is a conviction that the federal government has given the same, politically unbreakable promise: Medicare and Social Security are sacred.

The seniors’ share of the budget pie is growing: from $226.2 billion or 23.4% of the budget at the start of the Ronald Reagan era in 1980 to $354.2 billion or 28.6% of the budget for 1990. Excluding defense outlays and interest on the debt, the share of spending is a hefty 47%.

With their benefits growing, senior citizens must contend with the growing public image of “greedy geezers”--rich retirees enjoying cruises, shopping in the Virgin Islands, vacationing at ski resorts.

But advocates for the elderly dispute any such charge. “This is what happens in tough economic times, when those who want to reduce government try to pit one group against another,” says Ron Pollack, executive director of Families, USA, an advocacy group for the poor elderly.

Elected officials have learned at great pain that the wrong words on Social Security and Medicare can spell disaster at the polls.

After President Reagan temporarily backed a plan to reduce Social Security benefits for those who retire before age 65, the Republicans lost 26 House seats in the 1982 elections.

Four years later, with the Social Security fund in good shape, Democrats were still able to play on voter fears in several close senatorial elections, helping win the party eight seats and control of the Senate.

“When you so much as talk about changing Social Security, even the cost-of-living index, it produces a huge hue and cry,” says Howard H. Baker Jr., who served as a Republican senator from Tennessee and Senate majority leader. “And I thought a lot about that because it made it very difficult for me to try to lead the Republicans in the Senate or to lead the Senate back in the ‘80-’84 time frame.”

In many cases, Baker notes, the money seniors “receive in their Social Security check, or the benefits they get from Medicare, are the only source of income they have, or the only safety net they have against great illness.”

“So, when you tinker with it at all, they respond vocally and enthusiastically.”

To those in the senior lobby, these results simply demonstrate democracy at work.

The recent House rejection of the proposed budget summit package of higher Medicare charges was “a tribute to the ability of seniors around the country to let their members know they don’t believe these things are fair,” says Max Richtman, executive director of the 5-million-member Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

“We’re not saying, cut child care programs or other important programs,” he says. “Instead, we’re saying look at the very wealthy and make sure they pay their fair share.”

Older Americans shouldn’t be accused of having too much power simply because they “have been successful in being good citizens,” argues Fernando Torres-Gil, a professor at the University of Southern California Andrus Gerontology Center and president of the American Society on Aging.

“They participate actively in the political process,” he says. “For that, they are being blamed and scapegoated--for simply exercising their rights.”

To Torres-Gil, a former staff director of the House Committee on Aging, what’s needed today is to reshape the debate in terms of equity rather than age alone. “The debate continues to be framed as old persons versus everyone else,” he says, “but it should be framed between the haves and have-nots. We should discuss redressing the tax and income inequities.”

But such rhetoric isn’t likely to convince a majority in Congress, where members believe Americans are still fearfully opposed to any significant new taxes.

As a result, some lawmakers and analysts believe the two sides--the elderly who receive the benefits and the younger voters who pay the taxes to finance them--may be on a collision course.

If the current growth in programs for the elderly continues unabated, “you will see a crowding out of other programs,” warns Rep. Matsui. “Eventually, some of the other groups such as children’s advocacy groups and foster care groups and groups concerned with hunger and homeless may begin to see a crowding out.”

But some analysts believe that even if other groups go their own ways, seniors still will end up getting pretty much what they want politically. “They have enormous power and as a result they drive the federal budget and the political system to a large extent,” acknowledges Matsui. “This will be even more pronounced as the years go forward.”

Baker, too, sees an era of even greater political muscle on the part of seniors. “The older American citizen is better organized now than ever before,” he says.

Indeed, AARP/Vote already this year has poured 10 million voter guides into the homes of its members in 24 states. Stapled into the monthly issues of the “Modern Maturity” magazine is a special publication giving the views on elderly issues of candidates in gubernatorial elections, Senate races, and 125 contests for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Technically, the AARP doesn’t endorse candidates, but its pointed questions on issues involving retirement and health care are powerful ammunition for its members, who are enthusiastic voters.

Have these politically powerful seniors gone too far in pursuing their special interests?

Some critics offer a tentative yes.

“Spending on the elderly shouldn’t be disproportionate in relation to other groups in society,” says Sheila Macdonald, executive vice president of Americans For Generational Equity, a research and policy group joining the growing debate. “Whether we like it or not, we will have to address these issues.”

But the politicians who face the voters say Gray Power still looks invincible.

As an exhausted Congress struggles to finish a new deficit-reduction plan, Matsui observes, “Neither Democrats nor Republicans are willing to challenge seniors. No matter what happens, we will protect the elderly and Medicare.”

BENEFITS INCREASE: Social Security beneficiaries to receive a 5.4% cost-of-living hike in January. A4

THE ELDERLY: A BALANCE SHEET

Growth of federal programs for the elderly.

In billions of 1990 dollars 1971 1975 1980 1985 1990 Social Security 81.2 119.0 127.4 168.5 192.8 Medicare 22.5 29.4 46.0 73.7 93.0 Federal civil service retirement 6.9 12.6 12.2 16.4 21.6 Medicaid 5.7 6.0 7.4 10.2 17.0 Railroad retirement 5.1 6.4 5.6 5.6 5.7 Supplemental Security Income (welfare) 4.2 4.1 3.6 3.8 3.5 Veterans Pensions 2.7 3.4 5.2 6.5 7.0 Military retirement 2.1 2.5 2.8 5.2 6.4 Other (includes elderly share of miners’ benefits, food stamps, housing) 1.5 8.2 6.4 7.9 7.3 Total 131.8 187.2 226.2 310.2 354.2 Share of total spending 20.9% 24.5% 23.4% 26.2% 28.6% Share of Gross National Product 4.0% 5.1% 5.1% 6.2% 6.5%

Source: Congressional Budget Office