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After House Speaker John Boehner's ridiculous statement that he wants to know "who is going to jail" over the recent scandal at the IRS -- and Nancy Pelosi's statement that we need a "clear definition of what a 501(c)(4) is -- MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell did his best to attempt to remind these politicians that there is no need to change existing law to fix this problem.

Ahead of this Friday's hearing, O'Donnell hopes that at least one of the members of Congress attending will ask the IRS why they decided to change the way they enforced the statute.

O’Donnell reminds politicians of the real IRS scandal:

As O’Donnell has been saying since Monday, the so-called IRS scandal is only the consequence of an older and more basic problem with the organization’s reading of the tax code–specifically, with its reading of Section 501(c)(4), which exempts social welfare groups from paying taxes.

The law defines such groups as “civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.” Since 1959, the IRS has been reading “exclusively” as “primarily.”

“By doing that they made IRS agents judges of political activity, investigators of political activity,” O’Donnell explained in the Rewrite Thursday. “IRS agents were then forced to evaluate just how political a given 501(c)(4) organization might be. And it is very clear that if the words “Tea Party” or the name of any political party at all appears in the title of your 501(c)(4) you absolutely do not qualify for 501(c)(4) status under the law.”

Some politicians, however, still don’t seem to understand the interplay between this law and how it’s enforced.

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A Fox News guest who took on Sean Hannity for blasting President Barack Obama even as employment dropped to the lowest level in more than four years reaveled on Tuesday that the conservative host and others at Fox News are "so upset" that the economy is recovering.

During a panel discussion on Monday, Hannity talked over Occidental College Associate Professor of Politics Caroline Heldman as she tried to point to positive economic indicators like that the unemployment rate had dropped to 7.7 percent and the stock market was soaring.

"Nine million fewer Americans in the workforce!" Hannity interrupted. "You hear Nancy Pelosi, others talking about the stock market. Do any of those people on food stamps, are they investing in the stock market, Caroline?"

"I'm impressed that you're now concerned about the poor, thank you for that," Heldman shot back.

In an appearance on MSNBC on Tuesday, the Occidental professor shed some light on her interview with Hannity.

"You know, I have never met a group of people that is so upset that the economy is rebounding than the folks over at Fox," Heldman told MSNBC's Al Sharpton. "I mean, the signs are really clear, not only the unemployment rate dropping, but housing starts, new housing starts, housing prices, the fact that the stock market has doubled since 2009, that private wealth has been fully restored... But it is getting better, and we can't be in denial about this because that actually affects consumer confidence."

"I think that Sean Hannity is a perfectly likable person," she added. "I happen to know that he tips 100 percent in his private life, I just wish that his public stances and the stances of Republicans didn't go after the poor, the elderly, kids with Pell grant cuts, Medicaid cuts, job training cuts. I mean, you really do have to put your money where your mouth is."

"I agree with you, professor," Sharpton concluded. "I don't have a problem with any of them personally. They just seem to have a problem with facts."

(h/t: Media Matters)

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says raising the eligibility age for Medicare benefits is just a political "trophy" for Republicans because the idea would not strengthen the program.

"We don't want to hurt beneficiaries," Pelosi told CNN's Candy Crowley on Sunday. "We certainly want to strengthen Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid. We want to make them more fiscally sound. We want to make sure that for the purpose that they have been instituted, they're honoring the purpose and the taxpayer, and the beneficiaries are getting their money's worth."

"The rising cost of health care in our country is the biggest increase to the rising cost of Medicare," she explained. "So stopping the drastic increase of the cost of health care is important for our whole economy and health care. Especially important when it comes to Medicare is it's already working -- 0.4 percent, the rate of increase, much slower than it had been. And as I said, Medicaid [is] not increasing. Now, we want to do better than that."

Pelosi pointed out that Democrats were willing to negotiate with Republicans if the objective was to strengthen earned benefits programs.

"But if the point of it is to take trophies -- 'Let's raise the age' -- that doesn't save money. It's a trophy, it's a scalp, but it's not a solution."

She concluded: "Raising the age, I'm very much against... We're not there to make [the programs] cash cows to give tax breaks to the wealthiest people in our country and say, 'We're balancing the budget.'"

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They just can't stop themselves. Here's Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark) on this week's Fox News Sunday, explaining to host Chris Wallace why he doesn't think it's fair to be raising taxes on the rich and why we cannot make any cuts to defense spending, but cut away at domestic spending, or in his words "welfare":

WALLACE: Congressman Cotton, I want you to react to that, and as you saw in the clip we played from the president's weekend address, once again the president is trying to make Republicans pay the price politically. He's basically saying, these cuts are going to affect the middle class in education and law enforcement, food inspectors. And once again, you guys want to protect your wealthy friends from any tax increase.

REP. TOM COTTON, R-ARK.: Chris, the bigger risk, I think, is the way they are going to impact the Department of Defense. It's cutting almost $10 billion or 10 percent of the Department of Defense's budget this year, and that is after four years where the Department of Defense has been the one agency of the federal government that has not had hundreds of billions of dollars stuffed into its budget. You go back and you look at domestic spending over the last four years that exploded under the stimulus and just annual resolutions funding the government, there is a lot more fat to cut there. So as Bill said, Republicans have proposed a responsible alternative to the sequester, which is what President Obama proposed in 2011, which are shift those cuts away from the Department of Defense and to domestic spending so we can ensure, for example, that we have two aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, which we just stopped because of the sequester spending.

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It was nice to see Chris Wallace get some push back on the assertion that we should be trying to balance our budget on the backs of our seniors or that it saves us a dime to be throwing more of them into the private insurance market by raising the age for Medicare eligibility.

Pelosi Stresses Need For Job Growth In New Budget:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi defended Democrats' desire to raise revenues by closing tax loopholes, during an interview which aired on "Fox News Sunday."

Pelosi stressed the need for a budget which will create jobs and argued that the sequester would do too much harm to the economy. She also batted down the idea of saving money by raising the Medicare eligibility age.

"Don't you think you ought to see if raising the age really does save money?" Pelosi said. "Those people are not going to evaporate from the face of the earth for two years. They're going to have medical needs and they're going to have to be attended to. And the earlier the intervention for it, the less the cost will be and the better the quality of life. I do think we should subject every federal dollar that is spent to the harshest scrutiny. And I do think the challenge to Medicare is not Medicare, the challenge is rising health care costs in general."

Wallace was doing his usual bit where he was carping about how it wouldn't do any good to raise taxes on the rich, because that would not completely solve the deficit problem. He had no response to this and simply moved on to the next subject.

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Republicans just can't seem to stop themselves from flinging about juvenile insults at every turn, can they? Anyone who looks like this guy, ought to keep his mouth shut about the way anyone else looks. Someone ought to tell wingnut "terror babies" Louie Gohmert that beauty is only skin deep, but that ugliness of his goes all the way to the bone.

Republican Congressman Insults Nancy Pelosi’s Appearance: ‘There’s No Facelift With John Boehner’:

An outspoken Republican congressman castigated House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s looks during a radio interview Friday.

Speaking with guest host Larry O’Connor on the Dennis Miller Show, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) argued that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was functionally equivalent to Pelosi because both held one-on-one backroom negotiations with the president. Gohmert then went on to deride Pelosi’s appearance: “Well, let’s give him credit. There’s no facelift with John Boehner.”

O’CONNOR: So basically John Boehner became Nancy Pelosi without the charm?

GOHMERT: For the last two years. Well, let’s give him credit. There’s no facelift with John Boehner. He is who he is.

O’CONNOR: Oh!

As the author at Think Progress noted, it's not the only outlandish statement to come out of Gohmert's mouth. As we've documented here as well, the list is quite long.

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The House Democrats took a page out of Bill Frist's playbook, calling for an up or down vote on the legislation that passed in the Senate on New Years Eve: House Dem Leaders Call For Vote On Senate Fiscal Cliff Deal:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called on GOP leadership to hold a "straight up or down vote" on the Senate-passed legislation to avert the fiscal cliff.

Flanked by Democratic leaders, she told reporters in the Capitol that Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has a duty to permit a floor vote in order to prevent middle class taxes from rising.

And we're hearing noise on the other side about killing the deal with Eric Cantor saying he's against it: Cantor Opposes Fiscal Cliff Deal:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) came out against the fiscal cliff deal passed by the Senate, according to Republican members in attendance at a closed-door meeting of the House GOP conference Tuesday afternoon.

And his fellow House members aren't happy about the spending in the bill: Boehner Aide: GOP Members Concerned With Lack Of Spending Cuts In Senate Bill:

House Republicans expressed "universal concern" with the lack of spending cuts in the fiscal cliff deal passed overwhelmingly by the Senate, said Speaker John Boehner's spokesman Brendan Buck.

"The Speaker and Leader laid out options to the members and listened to feedback," Buck said in an emailed statement. "The lack of spending cuts in the Senate bill was a universal concern amongst members in today’s meeting. Conversations with members will continue throughout the afternoon on the path forward."

They're still saying they may vote on the bill tonight. I wonder how long they're going to obstruct the deal if the markets start opening and reacting to what's happened.

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Melissa Harris-Perry was on vacation this weekend, but I was very happy to see her guest host, Joy Reid and her panel members go after Democrats and President Obama for pretending that this god awful proposal for chained CPI would not be a cut in Social Security benefits for our seniors who can least afford it.

Sadly we don't have the opportunity for a group of actual liberals to debate policy as we saw here very often and are usually treated to our millionaire beltway Villagers talking about how we must extract a pound of flesh from the most vulnerable among us to balance our budget on the cable news programs instead. This was definitely a welcomed change of pace from what we're treated to far too often on MSNBC, where we've got way too many of them pushing for more austerity and cuts to our social safety nets, because heaven forbid we can't have taxes on members of the beltway cocktail party circuit going up.

Harris-Perry guest: Potential change to Social Security ‘absolutely a cut’:

On Melissa Harris-Perry on Sunday, panelists discussed the fact that Social Security was on the table in fiscal cliff negotiations — which has “progressives calling foul,” said guest host Joy Reid.

She discussed a proposed plan to divorce Social Security benefits from cost of living increases and tie them instead to the “chained consumer price index,” which assumes that people will buy cheaper alternatives when products become expensive.

House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) claims that such a shift would not be a benefit cut and would strengthen the program, but others claim it would inevitably lead to reduced benefits.

Reid goes on, “As we await a [fiscal cliff] deal, one of the most looming questions we face is just what aspects of Social Security are on the table?”

Recently, 102 Democrats sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) requesting that a shift to chained CPI be removed from consideration.

As they noted, that got some real push back from The Nation's Richard Kim and their other guests, Bob Herbert and Raul Reyes.

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Ed Schultz spoke to journalist David Cay Johnston this Friday about what America needs to do to keep adding more jobs to our economy, the importance of continuing the extended unemployment benefits, and the Republicans' refusal to help the problem by passing President Obama's jobs bill.

As Johnston noted, Republicans love to complain about "uncertainty" creating problems with the economy, but par for the course, they're generally the ones causing it.

SCHULTZ: We told you at the top of the show, Republicans are dragging their feet to get a tax cut deal with the American people. Those Republican delays are putting our economic recovery, I think, in some serious neighborhood, dangerous, very dangerous.

But the good news is though, the latest employment numbers came out this morning. The economy added 146,000 jobs in the month of November. The unemployment rate hit a four-year low. It inched down to 7.7 percent.

Here's the bad news. America lost another 7000 manufacturing jobs last month. Overall the job numbers are better than analysts predicted, but republicans refuse to compromise on policies which will bring back even more jobs next year. They are risking our nation's economic recovery. Here's how Speaker John Boehner's explanation today.

BOEHNER: The risk the President wants us to take, increasing tax rates, will hit the many small businesses that produce 60 to 70 percent of the the new jobs in our country. That's the whole issue here.

SCHULTZ: Once again, it's all theory from Boehner. No guarantee on that. But Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi says the problem goes beyond the fiscal cliff debate.

PELOSI: Our economy is moving forward, but it could be growing at a faster rate if the Republican leadership had taken up and passed some of President Obama’s job initiatives including the American Jobs Act and had passed the middle income tax cut.

SCHULTZ: So, let's cut to the chase. One of those Congressional members is lying. Either the Republicans are right on cutting taxes on small businesses will add jobs or the President's stimulus policies are fueling the economic recovery in this country.

Joining me tonight to sort out the facts, David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of "The Fine Print." Let's start with the job growth. Unemployment hit rock bottom near the beginning of the -- under the Bush administration. You can see this right here. This is of course the changing of the color here when President Obama took over in January of '09. Who is responsible for this turn around?

JOHNSTON: Oh, absolutely the President and it would be a better turn around if the Republicans had allowed a bigger stimulus. We would have many, many more jobs if we had had a bigger stimulus.

SCHULTZ: You would make the case we didn't spend enough on the economy?

JOHNSTON: Not only did we not spend enough, but we wasted 40 percent of it on tax cuts for small business, which is inherently savings and not stimulus. It was a real policy mistake.

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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says that it's now obvious that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney will lose in November because "everybody knows" he will never be president.

During an interview that aired on Sunday, CNN host Candy Crowley asked the former House Speaker if there would continue to be partisan gridlock in Washington if President Barack Obama was re-elected and Republicans retained control in the House of Representatives.

"You'll see more of the same because it's really important for the public to know that the Republican obstruction of President Obama's jobs bill and whatever he was advancing -- their obstruction is their agenda," Pelosi explained. "It's what they believe in."

"I always say to my Republicans, whom I know, take back your party. Because this wing of the party or this over-the-edge crowd that is taking charge of wagging the dog in Congress is never going to cooperate because they do not believe in a public role: clean air, clean water, public safety, public education, public transportation, public health, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. They don't believe in that, and that's what their budget is about."

"Bipartisan cooperation is on the ballot too," she continued. "When President George W. Bush was president and we were in the majority and I was the Speaker, we had our differences, we fought, but also found common ground. There are so many places where we came together."

Crowley wondered if Democrats could also find common ground with Romney like they had with Bush.

"Oh, Mitt Romney's not going to be president of the United States ," Pelosi said, rolling her eyes. "I think everybody knows that, right?"