Left-wing AARP finally exposed | Phil Kent Consulting, Inc.

Left-wing AARP Finally Exposed
By Phil Kent

After two years of the presidency of Barack Obama, even some liberal voices openly worry about rising taxes, a weakened middle class, the assault on our private enterprise system and the fact that the nation is drowning in debt. Obama has a lot to answer for as he faces re-election. So, too, do his allies— chief among them the left-wing AARP, the group formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons.

This writer has become more knowledgeable recently about the sinister role the AARP played in helping Obama pass his radical and expensive government healthcare model through the Democrat-controlled Congress over a year ago. This is because I’ve been named the CEO of the Atlanta-based American Seniors Association, the conservative alternative to the AARP with members in all 50 states. (By the way, ASA has a very competitive benefit package when compared to the AARP and ASA continues to pick up more and more members every week— most of them disgusted AARP members who have torn up their cards. Check out its website at www.americanseniors.org)

As I was getting settled into this new job, a welcomed development occurred on Capitol Hill. The U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee had been probing how the tax-exempt AARP stands to reap a billion dollar reward over the next decade as Obamacare destroys the competition to the products it endorses. The committee’s well-documented 34-page expose hit like a bombshell in early April.

U.S. Reps. Wally Herger, R-Ca., and Dave Reichert, R-Wash., oversaw and issued an extensive report on AARP operations that concludes by asking the Internal Revenue Service to assess whether the AARP abused its tax-exempt status because it is motivated by politics and not for the benefit of its members. The report, among other things, raises tough questions regarding the separateness of federal grant cash and lobbying activities between AARP’s 501c(3) charitable organizations and 501c(4) advocacy organization. Furthermore, it is a disgrace that the AARP withheld documents from Congress as investigators probed whether the organization abused its tax-exempt status.

ASA long warned that the AARP lobbied hard to pass Obamacare simply so it could sell insurance and reap profits. The AARP fought to gut Medicare Advantage which helps millions of seniors, because if that program goes away the AARP stands to gain millions of dollars in additional royalties.

In late 2009 AARP CEO Barry Rand even claimed that the various versions of Obamacare then being considered by congressional Democrats (with no Republican input wanted or allowed) wouldn’t reduce any Medicare benefits and only sought to eliminate Medicare waste and fraud. It was a lie. Every version of Obamacare attacked seniors’ add-on benefits that were a part of the coverage under private insurance Medicare.

In any event, the AARP’s shameless lobbying for Obamacare is now thoroughly exposed by congressional investigators. That’s why the American Seniors Association endorses the call for an IRS investigation of the AARP’s tax-exempt status.

A footnote to Middle American News readers: The ASA is joined in its fight against Obamacare and the AARP by the fine Washington-based 60 Plus organization headed by longtime activist Jim Martin. With these two groups now joining forces to educate more seniors and all Americans about the need to repeal Obamacare, victory should be that much closer.

Already more governors are worried about squandering resources on Obamacare as it begins to unravel and judges declare parts of it to be unconstitutional. Perhaps The Wall Street Journal said it best in a recent editorial:

“The larger story here is that the legal and political challenges against Obamacare are revealing the rotten process and substance of this misbegotten law, and that the only way to fix this is to repeal it and start over.”

And the taking away of the tax-exempt status of Obamacare’s chief cheerleader by the IRS would be just punishment, especially since the AARP mightily helped to foster the rotten process.
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