February 21, 2005
USA Next vs. AARP: Competitive Battle Lines Drawn on Social Security Reform
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Taking its cues from the success of last year's Swift boat veterans' campaign in the presidential race, a conservative lobbying organization has hired some of the same consultants to orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush's toughest opponents in the battle to overhaul Social Security.
The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured millions of dollars into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to spend as much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, the powerhouse lobby opposing the private investment accounts at the center of Mr. Bush's plan.
"They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," said Charlie Jarvis, president of USA Next and former deputy under secretary of the interior in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. "We will be the dynamite that removes them."
Though it is not clear how much money USA Next has in hand for the campaign - Mr. Jarvis will not say, and the group, which claims 1.5 million members, does not have to disclose its donors - officials say that the group's annual budget was more than $28 million last year. The group, a membership organization with no age requirements for joining, has also spent millions in recent years vigorously supporting Bush proposals on tax cuts, energy and the Medicare prescription drug plan.
So far, the groups dueling over Social Security have been relatively tame, but the plans by USA Next foreshadow what could be a steep escalation in the war to sway public opinion and members of Congress in the days ahead.
Already, AARP is holding dozens of forums on the issue, has sent mailings to its 35 million members and has spent roughly $5 million on print advertisements in major newspapers opposing private accounts. "If we feel like gambling," some advertisements said, "we'll play the slots."
AARP is spending another $5 million on a new print advertising campaign beginning this week.
Later in the piece, Jarvis makes his objectives clear - attracting one million members from AARP, by presenting itself as a conservative, free-market alternative to what USA Next surveys show are the more than 37 percent of AARP members identifying as Republicans. '"We are going to take them on in hand-to-hand combat," said Mr. Jarvis, who is biting in his remarks about AARP, calling the group "stodgy, overweight, bureaucratic and out of touch."'
Regardless, AARP has a powerful new competitor to deal with in USA Next; one that, according to Peter Ferrara's 10 February article in National Review, senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Innovation and director of the Social Security Project for the Free Enterprise Fund, "offers members all the benefits that AARP does. So unless you support high taxes and big government, as AARP does on every issue, there is no longer reason to belong to AARP."
- Arik
Posted by Arik Johnson at February 21, 2005 01:20 PM
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