Cicilline: Let’s bring back the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging
EDITOR’S NOTE: This commentary was originally published in The Woonsocket Call on March 5, 2017.
Twenty-three years after the House eliminated the
House Permanent Select Committee on Aging, Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-RI) introduced a House resolution days ago to re-establish the House select committee, once charged with investigating and putting a spotlight on aging policy, spurring legislation and other actions. During the last Congressional session, Cicilline, attracting 63 cosigners (no Republicans) out of 435 lawmakers, threw his simple resolution into the House legislative hopper only to see no action taken.
During the 115th Congress, on March 1, 2016, Cicilline introduced House Resolution 16, which would bring back the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging. Its charge would be to conduct a continuing comprehensive studies on specific aging policy to identify issues, problems and trends. Like the former House Select Committee, its work would not be limited by narrow jurisdictional boundaries of the standing committees but broadly at the targeted aging issue.
According to Cicilline, all standing and select committees of the House (except Appropriations) are authorized by a simple House resolution, detailing purpose, defining membership and any other issue that needs to be addressed, and funding is then provided through appropriations.
House Aging Panel to play important role in today’s Congress
It is extremely obvious to Cicilline and his 24 Democratic cosigners that included Rep. James R. Langevin (DRI), about the important role the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging would play in today’s Congress. In explaining why he introduced the simple resolution, Cicilline tells this writer that, “Our nation’s seniors deserve dedicated attention by lawmakers to consider the legislative priorities that affect them, including Social Security and Medicare, the rising cost of prescription drugs, poverty, housing issues, long-term care, and other important issues.”
“As you know, the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging was active in the House of Representatives between 1974 and 1993 with the purpose of “advising Congress and the American people on how to meet the challenge of growing old in America,” noted Cicilline, who represents the state’s First Congressional District. “The select committee did not have legislative authority, but conducted investigations, held hearings, and issued reports to inform Congress on issues related to aging,” he said.
Cicilline says, “The reestablishment of this Select Committee would emphasize Congress’ commitment to our current and future seniors and would allow us to focus our energy to ensure that they are able to live with dignity and enjoy a high quality of life,”
A newly operational House Permanent Select Committee on Aging would be charged with conducting ongoing comprehensive studies to examine the myriad of problems that older Americans face, taking a look at income maintenance, poverty and welfare, housing, health (including medical research), employment, education, recreation, and long-term care.
The newly established House Select Committee would also study ways that would encourage the development of public and private sector programs and policies that would keep older Americans active in their community. Finally, hearings would generate federal policies to encourage coordination of both governmental and private sector programs designed to deal with problems of aging. House Lawmakers and staff on this Select Committee would also review any policy recommendations made by the President or by the White House Conference on Aging that impact the nation’s older population.
Hammering the nail in the casket
Claude Pepper’s death in 1989, who had served as a former Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging, might have been an omen to aging groups of the bleak future of the House Aging panel. In 1993, Congress moved to tighten its belt to match President Clinton’s White House staff cuts. Democratic House leadership’s efforts to streamline its operations by slashing $1.5 million from its budget jurisdictions over aging policy would lead to its elimination in that year.
If alive in 1993, Rep. Pepper (D-Florida), serving as the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging, its chair for six years and considered by many to be the nation’s most visible Congressional advocate for the nation’s seniors, would have fought tooth and nail to save his beloved Select Committee.
House lawmakers who opposed the elimination of this Select Committee warned that standing committee staff did not have the time nor resources to thoroughly investigate aging policy but this select committee did. Even with these arguments and the intense lobbying of aging groups, including AARP, National Council on Aging, National Council of Senior Citizens, and Older Woman’s League, the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging could not be saved. No vote was scheduled to continue its existence on March 31, 1993, when its authorization automatically expired.
The former House Permanent Select Committee on Aging did have an impact on crafting national aging policy. In 1993, with the demise of this select committee staff, writer Rebecca H. Patterson reported on March 31, 1993, in the St. Petersburg Times that Staff Director Brian Lutz said that during its 18 years, the House Aging panel “has been responsible for about 1,000 hearings and reports.”
Throughout its existence, the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging prodded Congress to abolish forced retirement, reform nursing home operations and reduce abuse against patients, to increase home care benefits, cover breast screening for older women, combat elder abuse, improve elderly housing as well as establish research and care centers for Alzheimer’s Disease.
Support from the trenches
It’s about time that Congress brings back the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging, say longtime aging advocates.
As a former Staff Director of the Senate Select Special Committee on Aging, Max Richtman, CEO and President of the Washington-DC based National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, says bringing back the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging is “long overdue.” The House Aging panel will once again provide serious oversight and lay the ground work for House legislative proposals impacting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, he says.
According to Richtman, the Rhode Island Congressman is highly regarded by House Democratic lawmakers and was recently appointed to a Democratic leadership position,” he says. “America’s seniors have been looking for “a champion in the mold of the late Rep. Claude Pepper for a very long time, he says, noting that Cicilline “may well be just the person to fill his shoes.”
Fernando Torres-Gil, M.S.W., Ph.D., Director of the Center for Policy Research on Aging at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, says “The U.S. House Select Committee on Aging was a leading voice for older persons and an aging society and with illustrious champions for the elderly. Claude Pepper and Edward Roybal were examples of congressional leadership on protecting Social Security and enhancing nursing home protections.” As a former staff director of this select committee during the l980s, Torres-Gil remembered how important it was to have this committee “gerontologize” Congressional lawmakers. “It became in its time the largest committee in the Congress with members on both sides of the aisle vying to be appointed to this committee,” he said.
After the elimination of the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging in 1993, a brief effort was undertaken by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) when she became House Speaker to bring back the Aging panel but this attempt was not successful. It’s time for Pelosi and her Democratic lawmakers to make a full court press to make it happen in 2017.
Cicilline’s legislative efforts to resurrect the House Permanent Select Committee on Aging is in the hands of GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan who controls the chamber. The Washington, D.C.based Leadership Council of Aging Organizations, a coalition of 72 national nonprofit aging advocacy groups, could play a key role in advocating for and supporting the Resolution that would establish, once again, a House Select Committee focused on the issues of aging in America.