Musings: Seniors stand united to fight safety-net cuts
President Donald Trump holds up the "One, Big Beautiful Bill" Act signed into law in 2025. Credit: Getty Images/Pool
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” signed into law in 2025 is an attack on America’s seniors. It not only includes cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but it also threatens Social Security, the sole source of income for many seniors. Consequently, many more families will have to choose between buying food and essential medicine.
These actions will affect nearly 20% of the people in Nassau and Suffolk counties, a population of seniors that grew more than 20% from 2013 to 2023. Alarmingly, the number of our seniors living in poverty increased by 62% over the same period.
To counter these proposals, many residents over 65 have organized, with some taking to the streets. Seniors represented the second-largest voting bloc with close to 25% of eligible voters in 2024, and 75% of us voted in that election.
One such group is Seniors Taking Action (STA), led by Long Islander Mary Mulvihill. STA started in 2019 with a few friends at a local coffee shop writing postcards to support candidates and now has members across many states who meet by Zoom each week. Guest speakers have included Reps. Gregory Meeks and Tom Suozzi, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, as well as numerous other candidates, historians and political scientists.
STA spearheaded the creation of a national network of senior activists, called We the Seniors, which is active in 30 states. The mission of these groups is summed this way: “We the Seniors, in response to escalating threats to dismantle the American safety net, undermine the rule of law, and betray this country’s founding democratic values, are forming a coalition of senior organizations uniting to fight back. We declare that the generation that helped build this country will not stand by as it is torn apart.”
Seniors can act to preserve the rights and privileges of citizenship for themselves, their children and grandchildren as well as their neighbors’ children and grandchildren. Seniors can bear witness to injustice and cuts to our compact as a compassionate society, and many do.
— Robert A. Scott, Manhattan
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