Just as he does every February 2nd, Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his groundhog dwelling this year to check his shadow and predict the length of winter. Rumors that Phil quickly darted back into his hole after he saw the record-shattering debt racked-up by this President have not been confirmed, but if true, we can certainly understand Phil’s reaction!

In this issue:

• 60 Plus Launches New Ad Campaign: Prevent seniors from being denied care
• Obama’s 2013 Budget Offers More Debt, More of the ‘Shame’
• Poll Shows Americans Still Favor Smaller Government
• Democrats Dust Off ‘Medi-Scare’ Tactics for 2012 Elections
• AARP Providing No Assistance in Fight to Save Medicare
• Obama Fiddles as Social Security Goes Bankrupt
• 60 Plus Fights to Stop Rogue Pharmacies from Poisoning Seniors
• Obama’s Fossil Fuel Agenda Causes Skyrocketing Energy Prices
• Act Now to Block Harmful Pharmacy Merger

60 Plus Launches New Ad Campaign: Prevent seniors from being denied care

A number of senators supported President Obama’s heathcare reform legislation (commonly referred to as “ObamaCare”), which — in addition to cutting $500 billion from Medicare — created a Medicare IRS that will deny seniors access to the care they need.

Acting like a Medicare IRS, the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is a 15-member bureaucratic council that will dictate what constitutes “necessary care” for Medicare recipients as a means to cut costs beyond the half-trillion dollars that was already eliminated through Obama’s government takeover of healthcare. The Board’s so-called recommendations can be fully enacted without Congressional action, allowing them to autonomously ration care for seniors.

The result is that the IPAB can cut doctor payments and ultimately decide what treatments senior receive. Earlier this week, 60 Plus launched an ad campaign targeting 5 senators and urging them to support real Medicare reform.

Watch one or more of our latest ads:

• Florida (Bill Nelson)
• Michigan (Debbie Stabenow)
• Missouri (Claire McCaskill)
• Montana (Jon Tester)
• Ohio (Sherrod Brown)

Obama Fiscal 2013 Budget Offers More of the ‘Shame’

The President who promised to “make tough choices” and cut the deficit in half before his first term expired presented a 2013 budget blueprint to Congress in February that does neither of these things. And like President Obama’s three previous budgets, the newest offering shatters the yearly deficits offered by all other presidents before him.

Obama makes Americans nostalgic for the days when a billion dollars was still a lot of money. While cutting another $362 billion from Medicare, his fiscal plan adds hundreds of billions more in new ‘stimulus’ spending (including $476 billion for transportation projects like light rail), $1.6 trillion in tax hikes, and billions more in bailouts to unions and failing state governments.

Over the last four years, Obama has now added (for those with calculators housing extra horsepower) $5.15 trillion in debt to our nation, or more correctly, $5.15 trillion in debt to each and every American. Figured another way, four years of Obama has cost the average family of four $70,000, or $17,000 for every man, woman and child legally in the U.S.

The projections are even worse; over the next 10 years. Obama adds $6.7 trillion to our national debt, taking us to an I.O.U. of $25.5 trillion by 2025. And this is the ‘rosy’ scenario. In Obama’s first budget, he projected the 2013 deficit would be $581 billion, but in reality the true figure is now s$1.33 trillion, a misfire of 129%.

While somehow claiming that he is cutting a trillion dollars in spending, Obama still takes the nation’s annual spending budget from $3.8 trillion in 2013 to $5.8 trillion in 2022, an increase of 52%. If this can be considered making “tough choices” then the Golden Corral limitless buffet can be considered an evening snack.

Calling the budget “shameful,” 60 Plus Chairman Jim Martin said, “This President has a one-track mind, and instead of a path to prosperity, that track is a government funded highway to failure and bankruptcy. This budget echoes the exact policies of taxing, spending and borrowing which have drowned our nation in debt and saddled every American with the worst economy since the 1930s Depression.”

Since the 2010 midterm elections, the GOP has proposed more than 30 different budget and spending measures to reduce the national debt. Meanwhile the President submitted one budget plan which was voted down by a Democrat controlled Senate 97-0. The chances this newest budget passes either congressional chamber are just as slim. Still, it reflects the policies of a White House addicted to deficit spending and bigger government.

Concluded Martin, “Ronald Reagan worked to make America once again a ‘shining city on a hill,’ but this President is pushing us to be a city under a mountain, a mountain of debt. Americans deserve better than the failure and broken promises this President continues to shovel our way.”

Americans Favor Smaller Government, Lower Taxes

Despite three years of class-warfare rhetoric from President Obama and Democrats in Washington, the American people still favor smaller government and lower taxes, according to a February 2012 poll sponsored by Public Notice and conducted by respected national polling firm The Tarrance Group.

According to the poll, “When asked about the best way to grow the economy and create jobs, voters respond with a strong preference for cutting government spending and keeping taxes low (55%) as opposed to increasing government spending and asking the rich to pay more in taxes (36%).”

Among other findings:

• 73% believe the economy is impacted by the national debt.
• 55% believe the best way to fix the economy is to cut spending.
• 84% are very concerned the U.S. Senate has not passed a budget in over 1000 days — almost three years!

President Obama is counting on dividing the country by class and proposals to tax wealth, but by large margins, Americans still believe that when it comes to fixing the economy, to paraphrase a well-known Democrat campaign slogan: “It’s the spending, stupid.”

Democrats Dust off Medi-scare Tactics for 2012

File under “chutzpah.” The very same Democrats who cut $500 billion from Medicare and were ousted from office in droves by angry seniors in 2010 are now plotting to re-take the majority in Congress in 2012. Their plan is to once again demonize Republicans on the issue of… are you ready? Medicare. No, that is not a typo.

Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel (NY) said Democrats will make the 2012 campaign about “Medicare, Medicare, Medicare” and will attack Republican House members for their support of Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) reform plan to keep Medicare from going bankrupt.

But false strategies are still alive and well in the Democrat playbook, with even liberal-leaning news sites admitting that the Democrat Medi-scare tactic is flat out false.

Politifact, a national political watchdog, even went so far as to tag Democrat attacks against Republicans as anti-Medicare as its “2011 lie of the year.” It seems Nancy Pelosi’s dream to retake the Speaker’s gavel is just a bit premature.

Though Pelosi will continue to attempt to scare seniors with phony campaign tactics, it’s clear to just about everyone but her and the Democrat House caucus that their party’s credibility on Medicare is gone for good.

AARP Providing No Assistance in Fight to Save Medicare

Congressional physicians are reaching out to the AARP for assistance in solving the looming insolvency of Medicare, and receiving the cold shoulder in return. This prompted a response from 60 Plus Chairman Jim Martin, leader of the nation’s largest conservative seniors organization, with over 7.1 million supporters.

“AARP has once again shown that when the chips are down and America’s seniors are looking for strong advocacy on their behalf, they just fold their cards. AARP has a real opportunity — as well as responsibility — to help create a solution to save Medicare for America’s seniors and future retirees, but they reject out of hand all reasonable efforts to preserve and strengthen the program, just as they did with the bi-partisan Wyden-Ryan plan.”

“What I find especially troubling is that when President Obama and (then) Speaker Nancy Pelosi needed AARP’s nod to cut $500 billion from Medicare, they were there before the phone hung up. Now you have 18 Members of Congress, medical professionals no less, from the House and Senate asking AARP to help keep Medicare from going bankrupt, and the silence is deafening. This is all you need to know to realize that AARP is a political organization feeding at the government trough, and not a true voice for America’s seniors.”

The open letter sent by the Doctor Caucus stated, in part, “Unfortunately, as long as politicians obscure the Medicare program’s prognosis for political benefit and stakeholders like AARP fail to publicly challenge these political calculations by educating their membership on the structural financing challenges facing the program, a national conversation about how best to save the Medicare program will not move forward.”

AARP’s inaction on Medicare came during the same timeframe when 60 Plus exposed their hypocrisy on the issue of their coverage of pre-existing conditions as part of the many insurance products they sell to seniors. AARP lobbied heavily for ObamaCare and its call to cover all regardless of pre-existing conditions, but in the actual legislation, AARP gets a pass and can sell insurance that does not have to cover many prior conditions that seniors may have, a detail that will add tens of millions of dollars of profit to their bottom line.

These events offer yet more evidence that the AARP is a for-profit ally of the Democrat White House first, and advocate for America’s elderly last.

Obama Fiddles as Social Security Goes Bankrupt

For decades Washington politicians have used the Social Security Trust Fund as a personal piggy bank, stealing the money and leaving I.O.U.s in return. Those days are not only over with Social Security running annual deficits, but the program itself will cease to exist in its current form, going “bust” in 2022.

President Obama has not only failed to address Social Security at all during his three years in the White House, he has greatly accelerated the very deficit spending that is causing Social Security to die on the vine. So extreme is Obama’s neglect of Social Security, he failed to mention the program even once in his seven page letter to Congress that accompanied his 2013 budget proposal.

Noted 60 Plus Chairman Jim Martin, “While the President is eagerly throwing away trillions of dollars on bailouts and taxpayer funded loans to the failed companies of his political contributors, Social Security not only gets ignored by this Administration, but further devastated by his total mismanagement of our nation’s financial assets.”

Social Security is yet another mess left by President Obama that will require cleaning up by the next occupant of the White House. America’s seniors deserve better, and come November, they will be voting that way.

The 60 Plus Association Takes on Phony Pharmacies Selling Bad Medicine

With more than 80,000 online pharmacies populating the internet, the opportunity for seniors and others to be defrauded on the net is increasing each day, prompting 60 Plus Chairman Jim Martin to call on Congress to take action by passing legislation that will protect consumers and crack down on web sites masquerading as legitimate pharmacies on the internet. “Millions of Americans, but seniors especially, are in serious danger of ingesting harmful and counterfeit pharmaceuticals sold by fraudulent overseas websites, who are selling pills that are ineffective at best, and outright poisonous at worst. These websites are increasing in number every day, and increasing in sophistication to mask their true identity and the poison they’re peddling.

“I call on Congress to take action now, to help increase public awareness of the danger of these sites, and help put a stop to the distribution of these so-called medicines containing only-God-knows-what to unsuspecting Americans,” said Martin. “The longer we wait, the more we let millions of senior citizens and those who care for them play Russian Roulette with their health care.”

Martin proposes that Congress move forward with granting law enforcement and U.S. trade officials enhanced power to shut down foreign websites marketing pharmaceuticals without approval. “Anti-piracy legislation may be on the back burner for now, but while Congress delays, tens of millions of Americans of all ages remain at risk. Legislation to address foreign rogue pharmacies has broad bi-partisan support, and must move forward without delay.”

Record Energy Prices Bankrupting Seniors and Working Americans

President Obama is saying that the record energy prices and the doubling of the price at the pump during his time in office are not his fault. Do you agree?

For starters there is the President’s regulatory record through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — or as we should more accurately call it — the Economic Punishment Agency, which is pushing much stricter and costlier standards on energy producers, despite the fact that many of these regulations will cause entire power plants to close down and provide no actual health benefit to the public.

More than 32 coal plants will be forced to close due to new EPA regulations, killing jobs, shutting down small towns, and forcing the rest of us to pay more for energy. Coupled with the President’s failure to act on the Keystone XL pipeline, it is easy to see why energy prices — and the prices of all items tied to energy — have continued in an upward trajectory since the moment Obama took office.

Said 60 Plus Chairman Jim Martin, “This President is giving taxpayer-funded loans to Brazilian energy companies to produce oil to sell to us one day,” said Martin. “Why is the American taxpayer financing energy abroad, when we need more U.S. energy, for our economy and for our families?”

“Obama’s perverse energy policies are devastating to seniors on fixed incomes, who because of his anti-coal and anti-oil agenda will no longer be able to heat their homes to a comfortable level, or put gas in the tank to visit their doctor or loved ones. The President’s policies are killing our economy and hurting people — notably seniors.”

Act Now to Block Harmful Pharmacy Merger

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is considering whether to allow mega-pharmacy benefit corporations Express Scripts Inc. and Medco Health Solutions to merge. If approved, this merger will increase prescription drug prices and force many community pharmacies out of business, making it harder for patients to access the medications and services they need. Because an approved merger will disproportionately impact American seniors, we encourage all 60 Plus supporters to speak out against it by signing an open letter opposing this harmful merger.

According to reports, the FTC is expected to render its final decision very soon — so swift action is needed. Visit the Take Action section of the Preserve Community Pharmacy Access NOW! (PCPAN) Coalition website to sign a petition to the FTC.