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Legislators Examine Programs for Elderly
By Gabriel S. Oberfield, The Island Packet
June 1, 2005
Changes eyed; strain on system said to be ahead
The House subcommittee met May 24 to discuss reauthorizing the package of programs for the elderly under the Older Americans Act.
"Today, supporting the needs of older Americans is as important as ever," Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, of the House's Select Education subcommittee said in a statement. "By the year 2050, persons over age 65 will reach nearly 90 million, making it the fastest growing age group in our country."
First passed in 1965, last reauthorized in 2000 and now up for review again, the law encompasses a wide variety of programs geared toward older Americans. Among them are in-home services for frail individuals and nutritional services.
The subcommittee also heard from witnesses who said that an expanding elderly population would put more strain than ever on OAA services.
A separate Senate subcommittee also took up the Older Americans Act.
"Reauthorizing the act is a primary goal of this subcommittee," said Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, who chairs the Senate Aging subcommittee that held its first hearing recently on the law's reauthorization.
Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., the senior Democrat on the subcommittee, reflected on how the program can be tweaked.
"We want national standards, but the flexibility to adapt to local needs," she said.
The Senate subcommittee also heard from Josefina G. Carbonell, the assistant secretary for aging at Health and Human Services. Carbonell visited South Carolina in April as the keynote speaker at a Myrtle Beach convention of South Carolina delegates to the White House Conference on Aging, to be held in Washington this October.
The reauthorization process still must wind its way through both congressional chambers before it is finalized.
Also recently, the House's Ways and Means committee considered how to prioritize funding for various programs aimed toward Americans of retirement age, particularly in light of the ongoing debate about Social Security and the private accounts President Bush has proposed.
The committee's lead Democrat, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., stressed that the committee had to settle whether private accounts make any sense before it tried to attack any other retirement issue.
"The Social Security problem still remains a third rail," he said.
Committee chairman Bill Thomas, R-Calif., said Rangel's approach was argumentative and encouraged the committee to listen to the broader points raised by the panel of witnesses testifying before it.
Later, Rangel pointedly asked several witnesses whether they felt Social Security's funding shortfalls only could be resolved with private accounts or if the program could be reworked another way.
The witnesses, who included the president of the Employee Benefit Research Institute and the president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, generally avoided answering Rangel directly.
Witnesses also touched upon the vast expected growth in the population of older Americans during the coming decades as baby boomers reach retirement age, and the attendant stresses their presence will place on the federal government's financial resources.
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