What do the presidential candidates know about the retirement security crisis, and what do they plan to do about it?

ASK THIS | March 05, 2012

A scholar at the Claude Pepper Foundation writes that the presidential candidates should be required to clearly and fully articulate their policies. And journalists then have an obligation to assess the extent to which these proposed policies respond to the objective facts about the economic realities of old age.

By Larry Polivka
lpolivka2@fsu.edu
How is it possible that the Republican presidential primary in Florida came and went without anyone pressing the candidates to tell voters precisely what their positions are on economic and health security for older people?

Members of the media have not served the interests of the American voter well by letting the candidates avoid taking a clear stand on these issues. Indeed, reporters should immediately begin to determine how well-informed the candidates, including President Obama, are on the economic and health care needs of older people, and how they would ensure the future of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as viable pillars of the American retirement security system if elected president.