Retirees told to fight to keep benefits

There is a growing movement on Long Island of retired people who are frightened by -- and determined to fight -- any plans to reduce Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

About 100 of them gathered on a wet Friday morning in Hauppauge to listen to a man known as "the maven of Social Security."

That would be Eric Kingson, a Syracuse University social policy professor and co-director of the Washington, D.C.-based Strengthen Social Security Campaign, made up of more than 250 labor, disability, children's and women's organizations.

Kingson told a gathering of the Long Island Alliance for Retired Americans that the time is now to stand up for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

That's because this week, the so-called "supercommittee," a 12-member panel of House and Senate members charged with finding $1.5 trillion in debt savings over a 10-year period, begins deliberations. If the supercommittee fails to come up with a debt-reduction plan, as much as $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts would kick in. That would be evenly divided between defense and nondefense spending.

"Social Security is under attack as it never has been before," Kingson said. "Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are on the table."

Republicans, mostly, and some Democrats have argued that the entitlement programs need to be reformed to cut an ever-mounting deficit. But the talk in Hauppauge Friday was primarily about defending the system as a means of supplying Americans with a fair share of benefits after a lifetime of work.

Dorothy Zuckerman, who on Friday became the Long Island Alliance's past president, said the alliance was formed during the second Bush administration, when the president proposed privatizing Social Security. Zuckerman said "hundreds" have joined the alliance in the years since.

"We need more voices of this type," Zuckerman said after Kingson's talk.