Rep. Dave Reichert, R-WA-08, is “just getting started” in his jihad against AARP. From The News-Tribune:
In e-mails to the office of Washington’s insurance commissioner, Reichert’s staff wanted to know if AARP needed to be regulated under state insurance laws. An official in the insurance commissioner’s office, Gayle Pasero, company licensing manager, responded that AARP didn’t qualify as an insurance company covered by state law.
Wow. Just wow. AARP is now cowering under its covers at the mighty wrath of Dave, who called the state insurance commissioner, and was rejected. EPIC—well, you know.
Next up: Davey turns his back on AARP when it wants to play, staring at the ceiling and pretending not to notice AARP wagging its tail.
I also notice via Think Progress that Grandpa John McCain supposedly wants seniors to cut up their AARP cards to protest the group’s support of health care insurance reform. Yeah, like they’re going to give up those 5% discounts at RV parks, sure.
This is still the fundamental problem with Republicans: they don’t live in the real world. Gun owners may loudly proclaim that some undetermined, mythical entity will have to pry their guns from their “cold, dead fingers,” but try taking away a twenty five cent ketchup coupon from an AARP member. You’ll pull back a stump.
Ha! Ha!
Try privatizing Medicare and Dave will find himself applying to cohost Sarah Palin’s imaginary talk show. For that matter, Dave might as well have, he is toast.
For a guy getting a publicly funded local retirement package, AND pulling in his Congress payday, he is forgetting that he is willingly participating in the types of systems he is fighting to end.
Lead by example Dave, the tax payers in King County would appriciate it.
Ross Hunter, you would not take granny’s Medicare parts A-Z away from her, would you? No, of course not.
(Please, Darcy Burner running against Dave is one entitlement program I can live without.)
Reichert was on KCTS Connects this week, still touting his sheriff experience after almost 5 years as Rep (citing his deep-seated, investigatory instincts).
My nausea compelled me to leave the room before he went into any detail on AARP, but in what I saw he expressed puzzlement as to why AARP would support a health care bill that raises taxes, cuts Medicare benefits, and makes bats and snakes fly out of the butts of seniors, children, and cute puppies.
The segment isn’t available online yet.
Boy, when Reichert picks an enemy, he picks a doozy… must be some tone-deaf youthful staffers who haven’t figured out that there are 10X more AARP members than tea-baggers. Who’s next, Dave? the PTA?
While they’re at it, these Republican yokels should rip up their Social Security cards, too — that’ll leave more for me.
@2 I saw a news article a couple days ago that doctors and hospitals billed $47 billion of fraudulent charges to Medicare last year.
Should anyone be surprised that after 8 years of Republican laissez-faire management, Medicare fraud has reached almost $50 billion a year?
When Republicans talk about “reducing benefits to senior citizens,” this is the money they’re referring to. God forbid that we should pay for health care reform by reducing Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals who did nothing to earn them.
@2, he was also on TVW’s Inside Olympia yesterday. To aviod kicking in my tv screen I just shut the thing off.
Dave, you can run from Steve Scher, but you can’t hide.
@6: Must be a concerted campaign, more franking to follow.
@3
I agree. Dim Dave just can’t keep his hand off the third rail can he? Does he really want AARP doing a full court press for his opponent in 2010?
This may be the GOP leadership’s way of testing the waters regarding a full-bore “ACORNing” of AARP. If so, it’s an indication that they consider Sheriff Dave to be expendable.
AARP – provider of the nation’s largest Medicare supplement insurance, stands to gain untold millions $$$ filling the gap created by House or possible Senate versions of Obamacare. Both versions will cut billions in services to seniors. Less service provided by Obamacare = more insurance sold to seniors by AARP. Follow the money. Oh – wait…. I forgot, you libs are AGAINST capitalism and making a buck.
Pick a side on the issue – instead of your usual knee-jerk, hate-Reichert rhetoric.
@9
Lordy, I’d love to see the GOPers try to “ACORN” AARP. That would be an entertaining fight.
Sure, AARP isn’t an insurance company, any more than your employer, union, etc. is an insuarance company just because it uses it’s numbers to get discounts from the insurance companies.
My father-in-law told me that the Medicare-gap insurance he gets through AARP discounts is the best on the market.
So I can just see Reichart and other GOP tea-baggers going after the AARP. What’s going to be their slogan? “Not only won’t you have health care reform if we have any say about it – we want to give social security to the wall street bankers under a “privatization” agenda, and while we are at it, we are going to do away with any discounts you get on Medicare gap insurance, too!”
Yea, good luck with THAT one!
Stepping back, I can’t really believe that they are going to try to “Acornize” the AARP. Surely they aren’t THAT self-destructive, are they? Surely GOP leadership must live in SOME realm of reality? If so, they would merely be trying to flex some muscle, posture a bit, and hope they can intimidate the AARP to back off.
@13
“hope” would be the operative word. The AARP isn’t easily intimidated. After all the last time the GOP tangled with them, they stopped Social Security “reform” dead in it’s tracks and cost W all of his political capital.
OH PLEASE, LET IT BE SO!
It’ll be Whig-time for the now rump regional party of the South and the Mormon west.
13: Then we owe the AARP a big vote of thanks. Can you imagine Sept. 2008 with all our Social Security dollars at stake?
But Katrina and the Iraq insurgency made everyone aware that the emperor wore no clothes, so there were a lot of factors in play in not trusting GOP plans to privatize social security.
As an aside, I’ve often wondered if there were some very influential people in Wall Street who were following the big numbers, and realized that there wasn’t enough money coming into the system to keep stocks rising.
After all, the big increase in stock prices over the past years was fueled in large part by baby-boomers contributing large chunks of their paychecks toward 401(k) savings. These were going to drop off as the first baby boomers reached retirement age (about 2010) and they started making withdrawals from the system. Also, pay scales remained flat when compared with inflation, meaning current contributions weren’t going to make up the difference. Making the situation even worse, the middle class had expected the years between their kid’s college expenses and the retirement years to be relatively easy financially. Instead, layoffs and outsourcing has left lots of the middle-class hoping they could survive on temporary contract jobs (no 401(k) plan) just long enough to qualify for Social Security and Medicade, with some portion of their savings still intact.
So perhaps by 2005 the Wall Street power-players and their tools in the Bush Administration were gambling it all in the hopes that a big inflow of Social Security money under a “privitization scheme” would keep the ponzi scheme flowing, at least for a bit longer?
@16
AARP was key in scaring the Blue Dogs in the house off from supporting the GOP privatization scheme. They also managed to scare off just enough GOP members that any SS privatization measure was DOA the moment it hit the house floor.
You can bet the whole privatization nonsense was about trying to kill what was left of the New Deal along with more profits for Wall Street.