Given its attraction to money-seekers of all kinds, a senior citizen's mailbox provides a steady stream of material for Whistleblower. Betty Silber of Edina was suspicious enough of a letter she had received last month that she forwarded it to Whistleblower.
The red-white-and-blue letter asked whether she would accept $5,000 to settle a longstanding gripe about seniors getting shortchanged by Social Security. The letter came from The Senior Citizens League and asked for a contribution to "help pay for your national campaign."
Congress has indeed long debated boosting compensation for seniors born between 1917 and 1921, the so-called "notch" between people born before and after. The league's letter indicated that a $5,000 payment, available to those born between 1917 and 1926, had taken a "major step forward." In fact, it looked so much like a done deal that the League asked seniors how they wanted their money – either in four annual payments or a monthly increase in their checks.
Doug Nguyen, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration, said the "Notch Victim Register" is merely a solicitation for money for lobbying.
"That's all it is. It's a lobbying letter for seniors to send in money thinking that it's going to be, quote, the final settlement," Nguyen said. "Legislative proposals are rarely settled or final."
"Unfortunately for a lot of unsuspecting seniors, they end up sending money that will just go to a lobbying cause that's not having any chance of success any time soon," he said.
I wasn't expecting Nguyen's crisp response to the letter. So I talked to Brad Phillips of The Senior Citizens League, an offshoot of a veterans group called the Retired Enlisted Association.
Phillips didn't deny that the letter was an appeal for non-tax-deductible contributions to a lobbying effort. But he said that more legislators than ever have signed on to the "notch victim" compensation bill.
