60 Plus Chairman Jim Martin: “Ad is nothing more than political cover for their boss Barack Obama.”

(Alexandria, Virginia) – 60 Plus Chairman Jim Martin, leader of the nation’s largest conservative seniors advocacy group, responded today to a new national television ad campaign being rolled out from the AARP.  The ad admonishes members of Congress working on debt reduction not to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits.

Martin noted that the AARP has never aired an ad campaign informing seniors of their support in favor of over $500 billion in cuts to Medicare to help fund the President’s health care legislation, or the hundreds of millions of dollars the group makes selling insurance products to seniors, an enterprise which profits extensively from seniors displaced by Medicare cuts.

“Here we go again. Barack Obama’s poll numbers are plummeting, especially among older Americans, and his auxiliary campaign headquarters over at the AARP puts out an ad pretending they care about seniors and protecting Medicare and Social Security. This ad isn’t just empty rhetoric, it is outright deceit, and it will do absolutely nothing to stem the tide of the elderly who are already looking forward to making their voices heard in the voting booth next year.

“After watching the senior tsunami of 2010, Obama and the AARP are now singing a different tune, and have somehow morphed into the saviors of Medicare with their veto threats and lectures on any proposed ‘cuts’ to Medicare. What seniors ask when they see this ad is, ‘Where were you two years ago when you were pushing the biggest cuts in the history of Medicare?’

“When Obama says ‘jump’ the AARP says ‘how high.’  When Obama says he needs to cut Medicare, the AARP says ‘how much?’  Now they spend millions on TV ads funded by our taxpayer dollars painting themselves as the defenders of Medicare?  This is the classic AARP shuffle; one step forward, two steps back. Every time the AARP gets behind this Administration’s continued attack on seniors and their benefits, like clockwork you see them roll out more ads, wagging a finger in the face of someone else.

“The Democrats and their amen chorus over at the AARP clearly think that seniors are gullible and have a very short memory.  But no matter how much money the AARP sinks into commercials filled with empty rhetoric and political posturing, seniors will remember their continued betrayal, and their allegiance to the most anti-senior citizen President in our history.”

-30-