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Melissa Harris-Perry and her panel (which included Carmon Wong Ulrich, Dean Baker, Lisa Cook and Josh Barro) took on President Obama and his budget plan which includes ceding to the Republicans and their demand for chained CPI and explained why that proposal ought to be dead on arrival for Democrats who are concerned about the retirement security of average Americans.

This really was a welcomed change of pace from what we're generally treated to on the network, whether it be David Gregory asking just how much pain Democrats are willing to inflict on seniors, to the day after day drone on Morning Joe with Scarborough and his regulars demanding a pound of flesh from seniors as well, to Chris Matthews going after Democrats who don't want to go along with cuts to our social safety nets unreasonable.

It really would be nice to see their daytime lineup during the week, and Scarborough's three hour nightmare every morning filled up with conversations more like this one, but that's not likely to happen any time soon.

HARRIS-PERRY: The budget plan President Obama presented this week makes another push toward a grand bargain with an inclusion of an enticement to Republicans that had so far been off the table in the deficit battle, a proposal to take a scalpel to Social Security. His plan would limit the benefits paid to seniors by charting the calculation for inflation -- changing the calculation for inflation, to cut the growth of monthly Social Security payments in the future. So instead of tying the increases to the consumer price index, the President's budget would change it to a different calculation called chained CPI.

And while his budget exempts the oldest and the poorest of Social Security recipients, it would cause 65 year old retirees to lose more than a thousand dollars a year by the time they reach age 85, which far more of them are now going to reach.

House Republicans for their part, have refused to take the bait. But the plan has sparked resistance from within the President's own party as progressives launch an organized campaign against the proposal. So I mean, I mean I know what second term presidents are supposed do. They're supposed to touch the third rail that nobody else can. They're never run for election again. But this one has been tough.

ULRICH: Why are we picking on old people? Why are we nickel and diming our seniors who can't afford this? A thousand dollars a year, that can pay for prescriptions, prescription coverage that's not covered by the government, because in retirement, more than a third of your costs are going to be related to health care. $200,000 on average for seniors in their senior lifetime. It's crazy.

HARRIS-PERRY: And with baby boomers being where they are in their life cycle right now, we've got a lot of seniors, if everybody is going to stop smoking, even more old people, right, and so we know this is a huge population and I think part of the conversation has been, what are we going to do with all of these retirees, and this is one answer.

BAKER: You know, it really is outrageous I think, because the presumption is that somehow seniors have too much money. And you know, Josh actually wrote a nice piece on this a little while back. Our retirement system collapsed. We don't have defined benefit pensions any longer. Most people have little by way of savings. We know that a lot of people took a big hit on their homes with the collapse of the housing bubble. Social Security has been the one pillar of retirement income that's stood up. If anything we should looking into expanding it. So, I mean, this is just you know, the Washington Post loves this. But apart from the Washington punditry --

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Rep. Alan Grayson joined the set of Current TV's Viewpoint this Tuesday evening and was asked about former vice presidential nominee and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan's widely panned budget proposal just released this week, and as we've come to expect from Congressman Grayson, he didn't mince words with his criticism of just who Ryan is looking out for with his proposals.

Rep. Alan Grayson: Paul Ryan wants sick poor people to die:

While discussing the Republican congressman’s latest budget proposal on Current TV, Grayson accused Ryan of wishing a large swath of Americans would die.

“In one case after another, you look at his principles, you look at his vision, and they’re a nightmare for America,” he said. “He wants Americans to work until they die, he wants poor people who get sick not be able to see a doctor, not to get the care they need, not to get better, he wants them to die, and he wants an America that consists of nothing but cheap labor for his corporate patrons.”

Ryan’s budget would repeal most of Obamacare, partially privatize Medicare, and cut discretionary spending on food stamps and other programs, while lowering the corporate tax rate. Grayson claimed that Ryan also wanted to cut Social Security, citing Ryan’s self-professed admiration for the libertarian novelist Ayn Rand.

“Paul Ryan believes that Social Security is unconstitutional,” Grayson explained. “Just like anyone who follows the writings of Ayn Rand would believe. If you read the Fountianhead, if you read similar fiction — although they don’t regard it as fiction — you come to the conclusion that these are people who believe government itself, anything that does anything for people other than defend the borders, is fundamentally immoral and unconstitutional.”

Grayson didn't mince words as well when it came to President Obama and whether he might be willing to make a deal with Republicans which cuts our social safety nets: Rep. Alan Grayson: ‘There is no fiscal crisis’ and ‘Republicans are crisis junkies’ :

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Good for Sen. Bernie Sanders for standing up for what's right if President Obama tries to offer Republicans cuts to our social safety nets as part of some "grand bargain": Bernie Sanders says give people what they want: Safe Medicare and Social Security:

Sen. Bernie Sanders is leading the charge in the Senate to block any grand bargain that would cut Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits, and he's got a pretty smart strategy. He explained his efforts in an interview with Greg Sargent. Getting a budget deal is not about offering up the trophy of entitlement cuts to lure in Republicans, Sanders says.

"It's a question of making Republicans an offer they can't refuse," Sanders tells me. "Their position is no more revenues. You and I know that is not the position of the American people. One in four corporations doesn't pay any taxes. What Democrats and progressives should say is, 'Sorry, we're not going to balance the budget on the backs of the vulnerable.'" Sanders described the idea of cutting education, Social Security, Medicare and veterans' benefits as an "obscenity." [...]

"The alternative is not to go into a back room and negotiate with Boehner; it's to make our case to the American people," Sanders said. "I don't believe there's a red state in America where people believe you should cut Medicare, Social Security and veterans' benefits rather than doing away with corporate tax loopholes."

Now that's a pretty smart and pragmatic reading of the American electorate as well as a smart and pragmatic strategy for getting the Republicans to relent on revenue. Wooing them sure as hell isn't going to get the job done. But standing up as Democrats, with the people, could.

And as Greg Sargent noted, he may have some help some of his fellow Democrats in the Senate:

I asked Sanders if he would filibuster any grand bargain that cuts entitlement benefits. “It’s more than just the filibuster,” he said. “That’s a one day tactic. This is about rallying the American people and winning.” He predicted liberals in the Senate (Jeff Merkley, Sherrod Brown, and Elizabeth Warren come to mind) would likely band together to adopt a range of tactics to block such a grand bargain. “Filibustering may be part of it,” he said.

It’s still unclear to me what the endgame would look like if liberals stick with such a strategy. Republicans could simply continue to support indefinite sequestration rather than agree to anything at all, let alone a deal that includes new revenues but no entitlement cuts. Or if the White House does strike a grand bargain, liberal Dems may ultimately cave and support it. Or if a deal is reached in the Senate, it could pass without liberals. However unclear the way foward remains, it’s undeniably good for progressive Senators to be out there defining the liberal position in the debate in as high-profile a way as possible.

And from the Kos diary as well: Send an email to the White House telling President Obama to immediately stop proposing any cuts to Social Security.

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It was nice to see some push back from the constant drone we're treated to by the talking heads in the media, who apparently will not be happy until Democrats agree to inflict some more pain on their constituents and raise Medicare retirement age along with benefit cuts. As Krugman rightfully noted, all the happy talk about politicians sitting down and having dinner together isn't going to resolve the fundamental policy differences between the two parties -- or the fact that one of them wants to completely take down our social safety nets and privatize them.

He called out George Will as well who was demanding that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz explain whether Democrats would agree to raise the Medicare age:

KRUGMAN: Is it a condition of any Republican support that you have to go for really terrible policies? Because raising the Medicare age is a terrible policy. It raises medical costs, it does very little to improve the budget. It introduces a lot of hardship. Means testing in Medicare is a better policy. I don't particularly like it, but it's a better policy.

That's the whole idea. They know it's terrible policy and they want Democrats to do their bidding for them so they can immediately turn around and run ads against them in the mid-term elections. They were cynical enough to do it before and they'll do it again. So it's not just bad policy, it's bad and stupid politics as well.

The conventional wisdom talk from the Bloomberg White House corespondent here wasn't much better. There's nothing "optimistic" about these politicians potentially sticking it to the poor and the elderly when we've got record income disparity in the United States right now.

Full transcript below the fold.

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From Majority FM: Jonathan Alter On His Calls For Democrats To Embrace Entitlement Cuts:

Blommberg View Jonathan Alter, argued that cutting entitlements will guard investment in discretionary spending, guess how Sam felt about that argument? Sam and Jonathan debated whether or not CPI was a cut and agreed that the wealthy should pay more taxes...

You can read Alter's article here: Why Democrats Must Get Smart on Entitlements.

It's a long and pretty infuriating interview for anyone who has time to listen to all of it. Alter pretty much personifies everything we've seen wrong with our beltway Villagers who want to insist that liberals are being unreasonable and don't want to do anything about the long term sustainability of our social safety nets, which is not true. Seder did a nice job of taking apart his arguments and the constant false equivalency game he played throughout the interview, which was bad enough that at one point he was comparing liberals who want to protect those programs to Grover Norquist.

Alter based most of his arguments during this interview off of the assumption that if Democrats just agree to cut these programs now, that will stop Republicans from trying to make more cuts in discretionary spending in the future and that if President Obama finally agreed to some "grand bargain" that it would keep Republicans from demagoguing the issue in upcoming elections. As Sam rightfully noted, it didn't stop them from doing it in past elections and there is no reason to believe that Republicans still won't be demanding more cuts.

I also thought Alter was going to blow a gasket when heaven forbid Seder suggested lowering the Social Security retirement age and increasing benefits to take care of our unemployment problem in the United States. It would really be nice to see Alter have to face this same type of scrutiny every time he comes on the air and is portrayed as representing the left side of the aisle.

And I'm sure it will come up here again, but I hate the use of the word "entitlements" but that's what Alter called them in his article and in the segment above. They're earned benefits and social insurance programs and they are designed to keep people out of poverty, but it's not ridiculous to take note of the fact that if you turn any of them into a poverty program only, they won't have a political constituency left to fight to keep them in place and they'll wind up being demonized like welfare has been.

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From this Monday's America Live on Fox, it seems regular Stuart Varney is just begging for another tongue lashing from Stephen Colbert. He just can't seem to stop himself from worshiping the British series Downton Abbey and the good old days where we didn't have any of that messy "ultra-democracy" where those poor "fat cats" are asked to do things like pay their taxes, or have the food they're selling inspected, or do their part to make sure we live in a civil society.

It looks like Varney has been beating this drum for about a month or so now, but apparently hasn't gotten tired of it yet. He was also continuing his attacks on "goodies" such as universal preschool, which he was attacking last week. Who wants their kids going to school when they could be waiting on some benevolent aristocrat instead?

Here's part of Varney's exchange with Megyn Kelly:

VARNEY: What other TV show have you ever seen in modern TV shows where the rich are made to look generous, honest, classy and looking after people with their money and their power? Where else do you see this?

KELLY: Yeah.

VARNEY: You are taught in America today these people, the rich, well they are evil, they are unscrupulous, they're abusers, they are as the President says "fat cats" and they should pay their fair share. The President wants to demonize the rich and make them pay for all the goodies which are showered upon our democracy. [...]

Let me throw something else at you. Where else in modern American television, do you see profit and the pursuit of profit to be good. That's what you see in Downton Abbey. They introduced profit into the running of the Earl's estate to save the estate. Profit is good. It keeps people in jobs. When do you see that today in modern television? [...]

Well, we're taught that rich people, the aristocrats, they treat people badly and to be governed by these people is a very bad system. Juxtapose that with the way we are governed today in this ultra-democracy. Are you happy to be pushed around by the bureaucracy? Are you happy to have people from the government tell you what to do, where to go, what to have inspected, how much to pay in taxes and have money taken off you? It's a ultra-democracy. It doesn't look quite so good with a critical eye.

As I said, Varney is just begging for Colbert to do round two of a segment like this one.

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Jon Stewart had a field day with former vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan for his remarks claiming that President Obama used a "straw man" argument during his inaugural speech:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) reacted to President Barack Obama's inauguration speech in an interview on "The Laura Ingraham Show" Tuesday, complaining that Obama used a "straw man" argument to purposely misconstrue the Republican position on entitlements.

During his speech, Obama argued that America was "not a nation of takers." That rhetoric of makers and takers, frequently employed by the former Republican vice presidential nominee, came under scrutiny during the 2012 election. Many observers interpreted Obama's mention of "takers" as pointed criticism of Ryan and his political ideology.

When asked about Obama's comment, Ryan said the president used rhetoric to muddy the GOP's position on entitlements.

"No one is suggesting that what we call our earned entitlements -- entitlements you pay for, like payroll takes for Medicare and Social Security -- are putting you in a 'taker' category," he said.

"When the president does a switcheroo like that, what he's trying to say is that we are maligning these programs that people have earned throughout their working lives. It's kind of a convenient twist of terms to try and shadowbox a straw man in order to win an argument by default."

However, as Nick Baumann of Mother Jones points out, Ryan has repeatedly included government benefits such as Medicare and Social Security when using the phrase "makers and takers."

Stewart responded by showing a number of clips of Ryan using the makers vs. takers terminology to describe Social Security and Medicare, and then explained what the definition of a "straw man."

Stewart also pointed out that Ryan didn't share that same opinion about Social Security benefits turning you into a lazy moocher back when his family needed them -- something I wrote about here back in April of last year: Paul Ryan Touts His 'Self Reliance' During His Teenage Years, Ignoring His Family's Reliance on Social Security Benefits.

Stewart went on to show the part of Obama's inauguration speech where he said our social safety nets strengthened us, and finished up with this:

STEWART: So the rhetorical device Obama used wasn't a straw man. It wasn't even passive aggression. It was plagiarism.

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You just gotta love Fox allowing the Budget Director for the administration that blew a mile wide hole in our debt and deficit to come on the air and fearmonger about how we're going to "become Greece" if we don't do something to get our spending under control, and talk about making "tough choices" to fix the mess he and his boss George W. Bush helped to create. But that's exactly what the viewers were treated to on this Tuesday evening's On the Record With Greta Van Susteren.

Portman was allowed to tell the lie that the Congress supposedly voted on President Obama's budget. They didn't as Media Matters explains here. He was also allowed the lie and claim that our current deficit is President Obama's fault, when, as we've explained here repeatedly and more times than I can keep track of, the deficit got as big as it did in recent years primarily due to George W. Bush's policies as this article explains.

He was also on there pushing for their latest proposal to kick the can down the road on the debt ceiling for a few months, and to withhold Congressional pay if the Senate doesn't pass a budget, which as TPM and others have noted, may not be Constitutional.

Par for the course for Fox, none of their viewers were made aware of Portman's background, the lies about Congress voting on the President's budget, or the real questions about whether their latest gimmick is even Constitutional. Instead, we were treated to more nonsense about how President Obama isn't "leading" unless he decides to gut our social safety nets and balances the budget on the backs of the working class, the elderly and the poor -- because God knows we can't do anything foolish like raising taxes or getting rid of any tax loopholes for those wealthy "job creators."

If there's anything you can count on over at Fox, it's someone being rewarded for governing badly and for them to make sure that their viewers have absolutely no reminder about anything that's happened in our recent history and that the Bush presidency is washed from their memories.

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Looks like Tommy Christopher at Mediaite figured out what we've been saying over here for a long time now... that David Gregory is a right wing tool who's constantly advocating for really bad Republican economic policies along with a bunch of his fellow Villagers in the media: David Gregory Tells Morning Joe That President Obama Must Gut Medicare To Succeed:

On a very special 2nd Quadrennial Barack Obama Day edition of Morning Joe, Meet The Press host David Gregory provided some more evidence against the mythical “liberal media bias” when he endorsed the emerging Beltway media consensus that in order to deal with debt and deficits, President Obama is going to have to gut Medicare. “He’s got to be able to convince his own party, but also to do something that, frankly, Americans don’t want done,” Gregory said of Medicare, “which is to have to give back some things.”

[...] what’s significant is that Gregory wasn’t offering merely pragmatic political advice, but actually endorsing the idea that the way to solve our fiscal problems involves cutting Medicare for beneficiaries.

Unfortunately for America, President Obama has already indicated a willingness to move in that direction, having already placed raising the Medicare eligibility age on the table. Raising the age will only shift those costs, at higher rates, and only partially away from the federal government. Those two extra years will either be paid for by the seniors themselves, who will be charged up to 3 times as much for health insurance on the individual market, or by the government in the form of Medicaid for those who can’t afford private insurance, or by private insurance companies.

What no one is talking about is that Medicare is a huge break for private insurers, who get to lay off their highest-risk patients onto the government. People with retiree group health insurance will be covered by their health insurance for those two extra years, at great expense to those companies. The amount of money they pay out in claims will far outstrip what they can take in in premiums, and the additional premiums will fall on those retirees’ employers.

The other problem is that, relatively speaking, 65 and 66 year-olds are bargains for Medicare, and eliminating them from the program would only succeed at making the overall pool of Medicare recipients older and sicker. If there was a way to eliminate the last 2 years of eligibility, you’d be on to something.

Gregory and his fellow beltway hacks Joe Scarborough and Tom Brokaw have been singing this tune for some time now as we've pointed out here over, and over, and over, and over and over again. And as Christopher rightfully noted out, there are ways to make Medicare solvent without turning it over to the private insurance market:

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From this Saturday's The Journal Editorial Report on Fox, host Paul Gigot asks his panel what they expect from President Obama during his second term, and after the initial response from Jason Riley, saying that the president is going to be looking to fund his first term agenda, because "socialized medicine is expensive," fellow panelist Daniel Henninger threw out this stink bomb:

GIGOT: Dan, what about this theory from liberals, which is -- and they're cheering it -- no more mister nice guy. The president is going to take on Republicans. He was way to compromising in the first term -- not that I recognize that president -- but that's the line that they're taking. And so, you know... look, he's going to put them in their place. He's going to demonize them, stigmatize them. Is that what we're going to see? What is that...

HENNINGER: We are going to see it. I mean, the left has been looking for years for an answer to right wing talk radio and they've got one -- the President of the United States. He's like a left wing talk show host.

Uh.... in a word Dan... NO. We've got plenty of "left wing" talk show hosts out there and they're mostly way to the left of President Obama. They went on to complain that President Obama is to blame for making the Republicans look bad and that he's causing them to fight among themselves, as though they needed an ounce of help in that department.

And the Republican health care plan he helped get passed that you all loved until a Democrat proposed it isn't "socialism." These wingnuts just keep pushing that Overton window further and further to the right.