Time to Reauthorize the Older Americans Act
This month’s AARP Bulletin has a short article on the Older Americans Act (OAA), which is due for reauthorization in Congress. Without it, millions of older Americans could lose access to such very important (and already underfunded) programs such as Meals on Wheels, senior centers, paratransit programs, and more. AARP’s senior lobbyist says that the OAA is relatively uncontroversial, so reauthorization may just be contingent on a moderately-sized grassroots campaign to remind our lawmakers to take care of America’s seniors. Contact your elected representatives as soon as you can, and remind them that it’s time to reauthorize the Older Americans Act!
Senate Bill 1023: Older Americans Act Amendment of 2013
(Sponsored by Sen. Bernard Sanders, Co-sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer)
Contact Sen. Dianne Feinstein:
(202) 224-3841 (Washington, D.C.)
(415) 393-0707 (San Francisco)
Full text of the article available below:
Vote on Older Americans Act Critical (AARP Bulletin, Vol. 54, No. 7, September 2013)
Lost in this year’s political shuffle of health care, immigration and debt ceiling issues is a law, enacted in 1965, that funds services critical for keeping older adults healthy and independent. The Older Americans Act (OAA) is two years overdue for reauthorization – the periodic process of tweaking, overhauling or ending a law’s mission, or simply letting it stand as it is.
For decades, OAA programs have helped to provide older people with delivered meals, job training, senior centers, caregiving support, transportation and much more. AARP is urging Congress to pass a simple reauthorization that maintains and strengthens existing programs – which are currently underfunded – and does not jeopardize any of them.
Unlike many other issues, the OAA remains essentially uncontroversial, says Larry White, AARP senior legislative representative. “Everyone seems to agree that the act isn’t broken,” White says. “Everybody appears to agree that the act does not require major changes. There is almost universal applause for the provisions in the act.”
And yet Congress has not come together to reauthorize the OAA. There has been no movement on in in the House so far this year. In the Senate, a reauthorization bill introduced by Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has 18 Democratic cosponsors but no Republicans. Meanwhile, without a renewed vote of confidence through reauthorization, the act’s core programs, already hurt by spending cuts imposed by sequestration, are more vulnerable as Congress wrestles with budget issues. “It is not a certainty that Congress will not fund OAA programs,” White says, “but it is a possibility on which AARP prefers not to gamble.”