Special Interests or Citizens' Rights? “Senior Power,” Social Security,and Medicare

Abstract

Conventional political analysts and mainstream media accounts attribute substantial political power to the elderly in the United States. This attribution of “senior power” is usually made in the context of the politics of Social Security and Medicare. This article contrasts the conventional construction of elderly political actors as a special interest with a more critical perspective that views Social Security and Medicare as citizens' rights. Critical examination of the welfare state's role in creating age as a potential political cleavage and the politics of Social Security and Medicare reveals that there is no undifferentiated politics of aging in the United States. Rather, age interacts with a variety of other statuses such as race/ethnicity, gender, and class to condition citizens' political mobilization. Welfare state policies—social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare, means-tested programs like Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income, and targeted tax expenditures for private pensions and health insurance—differentially empower particular subgroups of elderly citizens and routinely disadvantage the most vulnerable elderly, including minority elders, women, and the oldest old.