Jun 26, 2012

The National Committee To Preserve Social Security and Medicare Goes Over The Top With Its Hype

     The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) is putting out press releases about the White House Senior Community Leaders Summit today. The press releases have gotten into a number of newspapers. However, the White House isn't involved in this "summit" unless you want to count a tour of the White House as involvement. I think a lot of groups visiting Washington for a conference manage to wangle a White House tour. I don't think that many of them try to imply that this makes their Washington conference an official White House event.
     I have written before about the NCPSSM's somewhat checkered past. If they wanted to be taken seriously, you'd think they'd avoid anything as questionable as this.

     Update: I am told that this NCPSSM event included a meeting with White House officials at the White House. In my opinion, it is misleading for NCPSSM to label this as a White House "summit." NCPSSM implied that this was a major event set up by the White House. It wasn't. The White House website makes no mention of this event.
     The truly major national organization formed to lobby for Social Security is Strengthen Social Security. NCPSSM is one of dozens of members of Strengthen Social Security.

2 comments:

Kathleen Kennedy said...

I was a participant in the White House summit held yesterday and it was exactly as described. 100 senior leaders from throughout the country were briefed by White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew, the Director of the National Economic Council, Gene Sperling and the President's Assistant on the Healthcare Economic Council, Liz Fowler. The meeting lasted three hours and was held in the Indian Treaty room. Not White House sponsored, really? Why didn't you check with the White House or any of the participants to get the facts before you write a blog that's demonstrably untrue. Makes me wonder about the rest of what you write here.

You should remove this or correct it since all you had to do was make a phone call or even send an email to find out what this White House event was really all about.

Anonymous said...

Your post is NOT correct. Last time I checked Jack Lew was the White House Chief of Staff, Gene Sperling was the Director of the National Economic Council and Liz Fowler was the President's Assistant on the Healthcare Economic Council. I attended the White House summit and our group met with and had a dialogue with Jack, Gene and Liz about preserving Social Security, Medicare and the outlook on the Affordable Care Act. As a person who is an advocate (well at least a paid advocate) for the disabled, you should be supportive of activities like this and report accurately about them. Issues concerning people with disabilities were discussed during the summit. I urge you to contact the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare or at least look at their web site www.ncpssm.org to get the facts on these very important issues.
Tom Tobin