There is a simple test for whether a politician is on your side about Social Security. Look at who is handing them awards.

American Journal News reported on August 13, 2026 that a dozen House Republicans — nearly all of them in races they could lose — have been collecting an award from the 60 Plus Association and posting the photos.

The 60 Plus Association is not a seniors group in the way most people mean it. It is a group that has spent three decades trying to take Social Security apart.

What the 60 Plus Association actually wants

It was created in 1992 to be a conservative alternative to AARP, with seed money from the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

In 1997, it boasted that it was "the first national senior citizens group to endorse privatization of the Social Security program." That is its own description of itself, not an attack from an opponent. It has pushed that position since the 1990s, and its leaders have called private retirement accounts "the only real answer" for the program.

Privatizing Social Security means taking the money you paid in over a working lifetime and putting it into the stock market. When the market goes up, you do fine. When it goes down — 2008, say — you do not. The guarantee is the whole point of the program, and privatization is the thing that removes the guarantee.

The group did not stop at Social Security. It also backed the plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system — while acknowledging that the plan would "phase out Medicare" for younger generations. Instead of Medicare paying your medical bills, you would get a fixed check to go buy insurance yourself. If the check doesn't cover the premium, that's your problem.

None of this is a secret, and none of it is old news the group has walked away from. Its president, Saul Anuzis, has also argued for repealing the Affordable Care Act.

The money behind it has never been public. 60 Plus is organized as a 501(c)(4), which means it never has to say who funds it. DeSmog's accounting found the group took in more than $42 million between 2010 and 2012 from organizations, many of them tied to the Koch network.

Who took the award

The award is called, in the group's own words, "Guardians of Senior Citizens." It functions as an endorsement — and the lawmakers who received it treated it like one, posing for photographs with Anuzis.

Taking it this year:

• Kevin Kiley, California — who took the award in both 2025 and 2026
• Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa
• Zach Nunn, Iowa
• Bill Huizenga, Michigan
• Tom Barrett, Michigan
• Mike Lawler, New York
• Ryan Mackenzie, Pennsylvania
• Scott Perry, Pennsylvania

Past recipients include Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and Monica De La Cruz of Texas. Rob Wittman of Virginia got it in 2025.

Every one of them is on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's list of the most vulnerable incumbents on the ballot this November. That is not a coincidence — it is the point. These are the members who most need to look like protectors of seniors, and they went and got a certificate from the people who want the program privatized.

The vote that already happened

An award is a photo. A roll call is a record.

On July 3, 2025, the House passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act by 218 to 214. Eleven of these twelve Republicans voted yes: Kiley, Miller-Meeks, Nunn, Huizenga, Barrett, Lawler, Mackenzie, Perry, Kean, De La Cruz and Wittman. Fitzpatrick was the one who voted no.

That bill cuts roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid over ten years. And because of a budget law called Statutory PAYGO — a rule that forces automatic spending cuts when Congress passes something that adds this much to the deficit — the Congressional Budget Office found the bill will trigger $490 billion in cuts to Medicare from 2027 to 2034 unless Congress acts to stop it.

So the sequence is: vote for a bill that sets off automatic Medicare cuts, then accept an award from a group that wants Medicare phased out anyway, then put the photo online.

The one who wouldn't answer the question

The most useful thing about this list is that we already know how some of these members behave when a real person asks them about Social Security.

In June 2026, a reporter asked Rob Wittman about Republican proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare. Wittman put a phone to his ear and pretended to be on a call for 90 seconds. The camera could see his screen. There was no call.

Bill Huizenga's approach was different but no more honest. When a poll showed him trailing, he deleted whole sections of his own campaign website — including the page about the national debt and the page about health care. He didn't change a single vote. He just stopped telling voters about them.

Monica De La Cruz has never held an in-person town hall since taking office. Tom Kean Jr. skipped more than 100 votes in four months while a New York Times reporter went looking for him at his house.

These are not people eager to explain a Social Security position to their constituents. They are people who found a group willing to certify one for them.

This is a pattern, not an accident

The 60 Plus award is one piece of a larger push that has been running all year.

Ron Estes, the congressman who chairs the House subcommittee that oversees Social Security, went on Newsmax to say he was looking forward to what DOGE would find at the agency he is supposed to be protecting. It then lost 6,645 employees in eleven months.

Tom Cole has pushed a bill for seven Congresses that would hand Social Security to 13 appointees and then force Congress to vote yes or no on whatever they write — no amendments allowed, four hours of debate, no filibuster. It is a machine for passing cuts that no member would have to sponsor by name.

That is what makes the photographs matter. Nobody in Congress is going to introduce a bill titled "The Privatize Social Security Act." What happens instead is quieter: a commission with no amendments, a budget rule that fires automatically, a staff cut here, an award ceremony there.

You get 65 once. There is no second try if the money isn't there. When twelve members of Congress in tough races decide the safest thing to be seen with is a group that spent thirty years trying to privatize the program, that tells you something they would rather explain in a press release than at a town hall.

Source

House Republicans embrace group that wants to privatize Social Security — Jesse Valentine, American Journal News, August 13, 2026. Photo: American Journal News.