Florida Primary Most Important

In what already has been one of the most intense and unpredictable presidential campaigns in half a century, Florida's "devalued" primary next week may be the most important before "Super Tuesday" voting in 22 states the following week for several reasons. Among them:
* Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has based his entire campaign on winning in Florida. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney must at least run a close second or third to maintain whatever momentum they have at this point in the race in which more than 40 percent of the delegates to the Republican national convention will be decided by Feb. 6.
* Because of Florida's large population mix of Northerners and Southerners, Hispanics and Blacks, a win by either New York Sen. Hillary Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama in the state's "unofficial" balloting for Democratic delegates who cannot be seated at their national convention may well indicate the electability of one or the other in the decisive general election in November.
* And perhaps most importantly, the United States Census Bureau says that Florida has the largest percentage of residents 65 and older - and the second largest actual number of those in that age bracket (behind only California) - of any of the 50 states. In recent national elections, senior citizens (using the AARP's categorization as those 50 years of age or older) made up more than half of all those who voted.
Consequently, the paramount issues of importance here are the future of Social Security and Medicare and the economy. The former has hardly been mentioned so far and the latter only recently has come to the forefront.
I've yet to hear any candidate, Democrat or Republican, propose a specific plan to solve the serious problems we all know we face with Medicare and Social Security. In their annual message to the public, the trustees of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds warned last year that unless something is done soon, reserves to fund Medicare will run out by the year 2019 and those for Social Security by 2041. They added that:
"We are increasingly concerned about inaction on the financial challenges facing the Social Security and Medicare programs. The longer we wait to address these challenges, the more limited will be the options available, the greater will be the required adjustments, and the more severe the potential detrimental economic impact on our nation."
That impact would be greatest in Florida, especially the central part of the state.
While it is difficult to come up with precise numbers because different sources consider the beginning age for elders to be 50, 60 or 65, it is clear that approximately 3 million of Florida's 18.7 million residents is a senior citizen. About 55 percent of them are women. Estimates of the percentage of the state's population who are older Americans range from 16 to 19 percent. The Census Bureau reports that only 12 states have more than 14 percent elderly in their populations.
Between 30 and 40 percent of the population in Hernando, Citrus and Pasco Counties is 65 years of age or older, according to the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy at Florida State University. They are among the six counties in Florida that are included in the list of 10 counties in the entire United States with the most residents in that age bracket. Residents of Charlotte County have the highest median age - 54 - of any county in the nation.
One out of four elders in this state holds a full- or part-time job, reports the Florida Department of Elder Affairs, and one of three of the remainder would like to work. So the health of the economy is very important to them. There already is concern because one out of 11 of Florida's elderly, or nearly 297,000 of them, is among the 2 million residents who live at or below the poverty line, according to Legislature's Office of Economic and Demographic Research.
Those poverty statistics include 10.3 percent of the more than 131,000 residents of Hernando County (6.2 percent of them older Americans); 11.7 percent of the residents of Citrus County (7 percent of them senior citizens); and 10.7 of the population in Pasco County (7.7 percent of them 60 years of age or older).
So candidates, what do you propose to do about these problems?