‘Updating’ Social Security

The folks from the lobbying behemoth AARP blew through Las Vegas last week, urging voters to pressure the presidential candidates to put Social Security front and center during the upcoming campaign.

That’s all well and good. Stabilizing and reforming a creaking system lurching toward insolvency should indeed be a priority for Congress and the president.

And, in fact, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have already weighed in on the issue. Mrs. Clinton advocates expanding benefits while increasing the earnings cap for contributions, the latter being a massive tax hike. Mr. Trump embraces the status quo, vowing not to touch the program except to eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse.”

Which is why the AARP’s campaign seems a bit quixotic. The group — perhaps the nation’s biggest impediment to real entitlement reform — seemingly has everything it could ask for in these two candidates. After all, neither has any apparent interest in tackling the structural and demographic issues eroding the financial health of the program.

“We want to make sure the next president and Congress do something to update it,” explained AARP spokesman Josh Rosenblum.

By “update,” Mr. Rosenblum doesn’t mean “reform,” he means “keep the money flowing.” While AARP officials have recently allowed that they may be OK with benefit reductions far off in the future, the group continues to advocate primarily for cosmetic touch-ups and additional wealth transfers.

Meanwhile, AARP generates membership dues by exploiting frightful seniors, warning them that advocates for stanching the red ink are waiting at the mail box to steal their monthly checks, even though no serious reform proposal would affect anyone over the age of 50.

Perhaps Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming whose tangles with AARP on entitlements were legendary, put it best in a 2013 interview with The Politic when he noted the dangers of inaction.

“The people are going to get hurt the worst if nothing is done,” he said. “If the howls and cries work and you don’t do anything with health care and Social Security and solvency, all the people you’re talking about will be sucking canal water in 30 years.”