Chaired by James Roosevelt, a son of Franklin and Eleanor, it parlayed the revered Roosevelt name to build a broad network of angry seniors who it then mobilized on various issues to terrorize members of Congress. “We didn’t count the mail from them; we weighed it,” Kennelly recalls.
The committee fueled a revolt in 1989 that forced Congress to overturn a catastrophic-health-insurance plan for older Americans that it had passed barely a year earlier. Using direct mail, the committee roused seniors to rebel against the minimal surcharge imposed to fund the coverage. “They did not have a good reputation,” says Kennelly. “They were very strident. They would come into your office and pound on the table. Whatever you did, it was never enough. You could never satisfy them.”
As the ranking Democrat on the House Social Security Subcommittee, Kennelly was as much awed by the committee’s power and influence as she was disgusted by its tactics. So it is perhaps not surprising that after three years in the private sector as a lobbyist, Kennelly has signed on to be the group’s president and CEO. “They’ve become much more respectable,” she says, crediting her predecessor, Martha McSteen, a Republican who served as acting commissioner of Social Security in the Reagan administration, with steering a more reasonable course. The gradual fading of one of the committee’s priority issues, restoring full benefits to the so-called “notch babies,” has also helped the group regain its footing. (These are the senior citizens born between 1917 and 1921 who believe they’ve been shortchanged by the system but whose numbers have steadily declined.)
The Social Security issue has been like crack cocaine for the Democratic Party, the one issue they are addicted to election after election as a way to win votes. This November will be no different. With the war dominating headlines and the economy seeming to revive, Democrats don’t have many themes to choose from to capture voters’ attention, and to move votes into the Democratic column. With only a one-seat majority in the Senate and hopes of retaking control of the House, Democrats will milk whatever they can from the tried-and-true Social Security issue. “There will be huge noise and fanfare between now and November,” Kennelly says.
President Bush put privatization of Social Security on the table in the 2000 election, and he vows to press ahead despite counsel from his own party that the issue could hurt Republicans. “I’m sure they’re looking at the same numbers as we are,” says a House Democrat. “Privatization is poison. The only group it works with is under 25-year-olds who like to play the stock market and don’t know about social insecurity.” A Democratic consultant offers a preview of the rhetoric that lies ahead. “You should see what I’m writing,” he says. “The Republicans are gambling away our retirement. Then I tie it into Enron–big corporations taking advantage of working people. This is where the Democratic Party rises like cream.”
Republicans will accuse Democrats of trying to scare old people, and they’ll be right. But Democrats like Kennelly know that defenders of the current system have an image problem, too. Told that the committee she now heads is regarded in Washington as a “liberal defender of the status quo,” Kennelly didn’t try to refute the description. “I’m not going to argue with that,” she said. But she went on to say that while defending the status quo may work during election season, it is not a policy for the long term. “I’ve never been a demagogue, and I’m not going to start now. You can’t just say status quo. My charge is to come up with alternatives. I’ve got to get prepared for after November, so when the debate is real again, we’re part of it.”
The election-year obsession with a “lockbox” to protect Social Security “made me tear my hair out,” says Kennelly. It was always a fiction, she says, and everybody knew it. “Look how fast they got rid of it once there was a deficit. The gimmickry has got to go.” Privatization is only one issue, she says. The other is solvency of the system, which is now projected to run short of funds in 2038. Bush has tried to sell privatization as a painless path to solvency, “Which is fine if you’re dealing in three sentences,” says Kennelly. She points out that the commission Bush appointed failed to reach consensus on how to pay for the transition to privatization, or the benefit cuts that would inevitably occur.
Kennelly consulted her longtime friend, Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, before she agreed to lead a group she once had trouble tolerating. Mikulski encouraged her to take the job, believing the committee can bring an updated perspective to the debate. The two served together in the House and have fought many battles together. As pro-choice Roman Catholics, they were often at odds with church leaders. “The bishops were so hard on us, never letting us speak at Catholic schools because they said we were so bad on abortion, and here they are,” she says, referring to the way the church’s hierarchy has covered up the crime of pedophilia. “They should have been harder on themselves,” she says.
Even so, she and Mikulski remain dedicated to the church. “You couldn’t get rid of us with a stick,” she says. That’s the kind of determination she brings to preserving the government’s core retirement program.
DEMOCRATS FEELING GOOD ABOUT NOVEMBER
New poll numbers due out next week show President Bush’s approval rating closer to 70 percent than the 85 percent he has enjoyed. The culprit for the declining ratings appears to be the Middle East, and a sense that the administration has allowed events to spin out of control. With the aura of 9-11 dissipating and the war in Afghanistan not going terribly well, voters are beginning to question Bush’s handling of foreign policy. Democrats see Bush’s falling poll numbers as a good sign for the November congressional elections and Democratic chances of retaining the Senate and gaining control of the House.
