They are sucking up to us "Old Farts."
Let us share their Quaker Oats, cause they're useful when they vote!
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Seniors' issues grab center stage
By THOMAS BEAUMONT
Des Moines Register Staff Writer
10/15/2003
Democratic presidential candidates have sunk their teeth into the issues dearest and most politically sensitive to Iowa's most powerful voting bloc, people over 50 years old.
After a spring and summer debate heavy on war, health care, taxes and trade, issues affecting primarily seniors have prompted the sharpest attacks and retorts of the campaign so far. The leadoff Iowa caucuses are just three months away.
For instance, Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt has signaled his willingness to broaden his assault on former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's commitment to Medicare today, as the AARP hosts six of the candidates at an issue forum in Des Moines.
"He has been for, on more than one occasion, saying that we should cut Medicare in order to balance the budget," Gephardt said in a recent interview. "He said recently that everything's on the table but Social Security and education, which by implication means Medicare should be cut for the sake of balancing the budget."
Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi says the attacks over Dean's position on Medicare reform in the 1990s are attempts to eat away at Dean's edge in Iowa and New Hampshire, where recent polls show him ahead of Gephardt and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who has joined the attack on Dean over Medicare.
"No Democrat wants to destroy those programs and to insinuate otherwise is beyond the pale," Trippi said. "It scares seniors for political reasons."
Dean has come to Iowa to unveil proposals for long-term nursing home care and importing from Canada cheaper prescription drugs for seniors.
But now Gephardt has challenged Dean, who said recently he would exempt only Social Security and education from potential budget cuts, to also declare Medicare off-limits.
"I've never said or been for cutting (Medicare) for the sake of balancing the budget," Gephardt said.
Dean, who campaigned in Iowa on Tuesday, has no plans to cut Medicare, spokeswoman Sarah Leonard said.
"The reason Dick Gephardt is bringing this up is he has spent decades in Washington and hasn't done anything about health care," she said.
Kerry joined the attack on Dean over Medicare and last week unveiled a proposal in western Iowa to provide a prescription drug benefit for seniors and to protect Medicare and Social Security.
During a debate in Arizona last week, Kerry criticized Dean for threatening to cancel a state drug assistance program for seniors last year if the Vermont Legislature did not agree to a higher cigarette tax. Dean said the move was an exercise in political leverage that saved the drug plan and won him the higher tax.
By raising the issues - often pointedly - in the state where more than a third of Democratic caucus-goers are at least 65 years old, the candidates are demonstrating how competitive the caucus campaign has become and the force seniors pose in Iowa and nationally.
The attacks have caught the attention of at least some senior voters.
"It's one of the things that has made me more hazy about supporting Dean," said Gloria Lintner, a 74-year-old Windsor Heights Democrat vacillating between supporting Gephardt and Dean. "We need Medicare. I do have a good supplement, but we still need Medicare."
Last month, Gephardt chose Iowa to first criticize Dean's 1995 support of a proposal by the Republican-led Congress to cut $270 billion from Medicare, which led to President Clinton's veto and the subsequent shutdown of the federal government.
Dean supported the cuts and, as head of the National Governors Association, sharply criticized Medicare's administration as inefficient. Because of those positions, Gephardt linked Dean with then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the polarizing Republican who led the fight for the cuts.
Dean has said he supported the cuts to save the program from going bankrupt and that Clinton, two years later, adopted the same view by signing a budget agreement that cut Medicare.
Clinton's top policy advisers say Dean supported cuts far more drastic than the 1997 budget Clinton signed, which included cutting $115 billion from Medicare.
"We never embraced the $270 billion cut. If the contention is we supported that level of savings, it's not true. We said it was excessive and harmful," said Chris Jennings, who was Clinton's chief health care policy adviser.
Former Clinton aides and seniors' advocates disagree about whether Gephardt's association of Dean and Gingrich is a productive political tactic.
"In politics, people are going to look for the edge as to how you get the point across," said former Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta, a former California congressman. "I can see why Gephardt would use that argument."
Roughly 70 percent of Democratic primary voters nationally are 50 or older, according to AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons. Iowa's Democratic caucus-goers are even older, with 74.4 percent 50 and older and 37 percent 65 and older.
Seniors consider candidates' positions on those key health-related issues, but make their decisions, much like other voters, based on a combination of factors, said Nancy George, voter education coordinator for the AARP.
They also are quick to dismiss political attacks, she said.
"Our folks look at that as just politics," she said. "They will look at whether a candidate has supported these programs but are more concerned about the future."
Hazel Bengard, an Exira Democrat, is leaning toward other candidates, but said she might also consider Dean after hearing that he was critical of Medicare's administration and had supported cutting it to save it.
"He was trying to do something about it before it went broke," said Bengard, 69, who is considering supporting Gephardt, Kerry or North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. "He saw that there was something there which wasn't working and wanted to know how it got so out of kilter."
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