J
ulie Tippens brings over 40 years of expertise in public policy and advocacy to her role working with Generations United as a Senior Fellow, including nearly 20 years of experience on Capitol Hill. There, she helped to organize lawmakers’ efforts to push back on proposals to partially privatize Social Security, organized hearings to oppose excessive cuts to Medicare and worked to restore previous cuts to Social Security such as the student benefit. She was the lead staff support in writing an alternative welfare reform bill that helped to curb more extreme proposals before it was enacted into law.
Julie worked for several years at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) as Director of Grassroots and Strategic Partnerships where she advanced the organization’s opposition to the “chained CPI” with respect to annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustments and the impact of Social Security proposals contained in the Simpson-Bowles National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Julie contributed to NCPSSM’s publication “Breaking the Social Security Glass Ceiling” and its ensuing campaign to expand Social Security benefits, particularly to increase the survivor benefit, establish credits for family caregivers and restore the student benefit.
In 2009, Julie was selected as a fellow at the Stennis Center for Public Service, a bipartisan, bicameral group of Capitol Hill staff studying public policy. She remains a Senior Stennis Fellow.
Julie recently retired as Director of the Legislative, Mobilization and Political Department at the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE). She originally came to the organization as its Retiree Director and came to know many retirees who remained active in their union as they also raised grandchildren and other family members.