Groucho Marx famously quipped that he wouldn’t want to belong to any group that would want him as a member. Perhaps from the great beyond Groucho can take heart in the fact he’d feel perfectly comfortable as a member of today’s AARP, whose embrace of “Obamacare” once again demonstrates their complete indifference toward their 35 million dues-paying members, if not outright hostility toward seniors everywhere.

Very few Americans have been able to isolate or immunize themselves from today’s economic hardships, but for America’s seniors and working families, the impact is even more severe. Savings built and strengthened over a lifetime have been erased. The cost of living continues to climb. And golden years for many that should be filled with travel, relaxation and quality time with grandchildren are instead filled with apprehension and anxiety.

“In 1962, I covered Congress as a reporter for a news bureau that included the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune, the Columbia (S.C.) State, the Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, WFLA-(Tampa) TV, 50,000-watt radio stations WDBO (Orlando) and WGBS (Miami) to name a few of the more than two dozen media outlets.

From that perspective, I witnessed one of the most lopsided presidential victories ever. Democrat Lyndon Johnson beat Republican Barry Goldwater, 486 electoral votes to 52 with a popular vote of 43 million to 27 million.

Only in Washington could a supposedly self-funded government program that’s operating in the red and facing insolvency walk away from an opportunity to save billions of dollars.Yet that’s exactly what Medicare, the health care program for seniors, is doing: shamefully ignoring an opportunity to save billions by forcing retirees who want to pay for their own medical coverage to accept Medicare.

“Congress: Give The President The Line Item Veto” in the January 3, 2007 edition of the Wall Street Journal, President Bush authored an op ed entitled, “What the Congress Can Do for America” in which he wrote, among other things, “It’s time Congress give the President a line item veto.”