From Doo-Wop to Do Good

As president of the Social Security Works PAC, Jon Bauman is an expert on public policy, especially when it comes to Social Security and Medicare. He crisscrosses the country advocating to bolster and expand both programs, but Bowzer — a character Bauman created when he joined the rock and roll/doo-wop band Sha Na Na in 1970 — always shows up.

"He's been kind of an alter ego in a fun way," Bauman, a magna cum laude graduate from Columbia University, said of his greased-hair, muscle-shirt-wearing persona. "I've always been a very intellectual person, so a little infusion of the Bowzer bravado is good for me.

"At the end of every presentation I'll say, 'So I guess the way Bowzer would say this is — Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom ba ba bom ba ba bom ba ba dang a dang dang ba ba ding a dong ding, vote for —' and then I fill in the name."

Bauman can talk in depth about proposals to privatize Social Security, negotiations with big pharmaceutical companies, the intricacies of the bills in Congress and his "Truth in Music" law, but he never thought of himself as a socially awkward kid only interested in academics.

"I ran for president of the grade school in sixth grade, which was a nerdy thing to do, and (my friends and I) did Jon Bauman's 188 Bandstand — a takeoff on "American Bandstand" — and we changed lyrics to rock and roll songs," he said. At the same time, Bauman got good grades and loved to play baseball. "I never thought of myself as a nerdy kid because I was a good athlete."

He was born on September 14, 1947, in Brooklyn, and was a child prodigy at piano. At age seven, he sat down at the upright piano in his home and started playing even though he doesn't recall anyone else in his family playing the piano.

"I had perfect pitch and had this song in my head so one day I just started playing it," Bauman recalled. "My parents were like, 'Where'd this come from?' and decided to sign me up for piano lessons. My teacher encouraged me to try out for Juilliard, so I guess she thought I was pretty good."

Bauman attended The Juilliard School from ages 12 to 17 and was trained in classical music. For college, he enrolled in Columbia University to get a broader education.

"My brother was 10 years older than me, so in 1955, when rock and roll began, I was eight and he was 18 and playing all the new music," Bauman recalls. "I gravitated toward rock right away but I was being trained in classical."

At Columbia, Bauman got involved with The Kingsmen, a men's a cappella group that later transformed into Sha Na Na. He tells a story of his mother — who forced him to practice piano for years — sitting in the third row of Carnegie Hall during one of his performances. At one point, she proudly stood and shouted, "Jonathan, you made it!"

Indeed, he had — not for playing Chopin on the piano, but performing "Rama Lama Ding Dong" with Sha Na Na in 1973.

"After the performance, my mom went out to the merchandising table and started signing autographs as Bowzer's mother," he said.

It was also because of his mother that he began advocating for Social Security and Medicare. In comparison to his grandparents' generation, his mother's life after retirement was vastly improved.

"This is the personal reason why I'm doing this," Bauman said. "It was her Social Security and that relatively new program, Medicare, that allowed her to live a life of dignity and independence, which was completely unknown to my grandparents. Before Social Security, my father would use the phrase, 'going to the poor house,' which literally meant if your kids didn't take you in and you didn't have the means, you were going to the poor house."

At his presentations, Bauman often rattles off statistics of the dire situation many older adults faced when they retired back then. Before Social Security was created, more than 50% of older adults had incomes below the poverty line, he said. Once Medicare was passed, the number dropped to around 35%.

"You know I love the music of the '50s and early '60s, but that does not mean I actually want to go back to the '50s and early '60s because I don't want to go back to a time before Medicare was passed in 1965 and I CERTAINLY do not want to go back to a time before Social Security," he said.

He travels to Congressional elections around the country with his wife, Mary, whom he met on a 1971 blind date set up by 'Screamin' Scott' Simon, another member of Sha Na Na, and his fiancé. They support and endorse candidates who will fight for and expand Social Security and Medicare.

"The biggest challenge that we face is people who don't support these issues lying just so they can get elected," he said explaining how the Social Security Works PAC is allies with Alliance for Retired Americans, which created a scorecard with 10 senior issues and how members of Congress voted on them.

"The amount of people who run on, 'Oh I'm never going to cut your Social Security,' who only make votes to cut Social Security, privatize the programs and make the programs something that won't work is frustrating — it's so shameless, and that's the hardest thing," he said. "Watch what they do and not what they say."

He explains that privatizing Social Security means allowing retirees to take a lump sum of their Social Security benefits and invest some or all of it on Wall Street, exposed to the vagaries of the markets.

"Retirees taking Social Security money that they've paid into all their working lives and gambling it on Wall Street is not a safe idea," he said, trying to explain why some politicians would want this to happen. "Like in 2007, when there was a crash, you'd be out of luck if you were retiring at that time and your money was in the stock market."

"But who would love it if we all gambled on Wall Street?" Bauman continued, "and who would reward those who brought all this money to Wall Street? Wall Street. There's a lot of money there, including massive campaign contributions and CEO jobs waiting for elected individuals when they retire from politics."

Through his efforts with Social Security Works, Bauman has become knowledgeable about policy affecting older adults and knows there are a lot of good bills trying to get passed and signed into law.

"Making good policy is a lot easier when good people are elected who think the goal is to make good policy as opposed to the goal of enriching themselves," Bauman said. "There was a bill on the table that worked — you can quibble about this or that — but by and large this was a consensus position and it still couldn't get passed. It's frustrating.

"Some politicians would rather demonize one another rather than do what's best for the people they serve," he added. "Good policy is policy that deals with problems of the present, looks into the future, solves them in a way that's fiscally sound, but is progressive in a sense to solve the problem for decades to come."

Bauman explains that there are politicians who are more interested in what benefits them than all their constituents and the greater good, but there are also politicians who make decisions based on what's best for the people they serve.

"The chore for the voters is to distinguish one from the other," he said. "To be able to figure out, oh this guy is really in it for himself, whereas this person is really in public service and trying to do the right thing."