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(Chuck Todd: Republicans will give Democrats all the revenue they want, if they just agree to raise the retirement age. Trust them.)

I don't know about anyone else, but as someone who has actually worked at one of those jobs where you take a shower at the end of the work day and not before you go in, I'm sick to death of watching these overpaid television pundits and their counterparts in the Congress, nonchalantly discussing raising the retirement age. It may not matter much to them, but there are real economic hardships involved when you force the average wage earner out there to continue to work until they drop dead if the retirement age is raised any higher than it already is now.

If our beltway Villagers and politicians really believe that it's no big deal to raise the retirement age for the rest of America, how about we ask them to walk a mile in our shoes? I wonder if any of them would decide that maybe it's not such a great idea to be doing physical labor well into your late sixties if they were the ones actually having to do those jobs?

I wonder if Chuck Todd would be a little more worried about when he might be able to retire if he were say, some migrant worker picking berries and in need of daily visits to the chiropractor he can't afford because his back is screaming all day from being bent over?

Or how Mrs. Greenspan would feel if she were working at Mickey-D's flipping burgers and serving fries and standing on a ceramic floor, with her varicose veins getting worse by the minute?

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After we saw Harold Ford Jr. (D-Wall Street) step all over the Obama campaign's criticism of Bain Capital along with some of his fellow surrogates like Cory Booker last month, it's not surprising to see Ford continuing to give bad advice to the Obama administration on economic policy whenever we're unfortunate enough for someone in the media to allow a microphone to be put in front of his mouth.

After the Wall Street Journal's Kim Strassel went after the Obama campaign for daring to attack Mitt Romney, his time at Bain Capital and what his policies might mean for the country and claiming that they've laid out no plan for the future, never mind that he has put forth a jobs bill that Republicans rejected, and her ignoring the obstruction he's had to deal with, we got treated to Harold Ford telling the Obama administration they should be running on austerity and "entitlement reform."

Ford is repeating the lines we've heard out of Republicans time and again and that's fearmongering over this "debt bomb" and using that as an excuse to slash our social safety nets and claiming they want "tax reform" that I will be shocked if it ends up being anything other than going after tax breaks for the poor and middle class and ending up lowering rates on the richest among us. We also had Ford touting "entitlement reform" which is code for privatizing Social Security and Medicare.

I think the only advice the Obama administration needs to take from the likes of Ford is to ignore him completely or ask him to please STFU. Austerity is killing European economies right now and we need more stimulus and not a retraction of government spending in the U.S. right now. I'll be happy when I no longer see Ford's face on the air again to give anyone bad advice on how to lose an election as he did here, or how to protect his buddies on Wall Street, but Joe Scarborough and David Gregory insist on having him on as a fixture on their programs. Sadly we'll never see any former progressive members of the Congress given the same amount of air time.

Apparently no amount of failure ever goes unrewarded if the Villagers in our mainstream media want to get your message out. If Ford actually believes that "reforming" Social Security is a good idea for Democrats to run on, which we all know means privatizing it, maybe he should ask George W. Bush how that worked out for him when he went out there and tried to sell that to the electorate.

Transcript below the fold.

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Here we go again with more projection from Liz Cheney. When asked about President Obama's speech in Kansas last week in which he talked about the Republicans being the party who are just looking out for the rich, the viewers of Fox News Sunday were treated by Cheney to political analysis that was about as ridiculous as when she claimed President Obama wanted to trash the economy on purpose for political benefit, as though a bad economy would somehow help his chances of being re-elected.

This week, it was more harping about regulations and the health care law somehow destroying our economy, lying that the stimulus bill didn't do any good to turn things around and pushing to have our social safety nets destroyed in the name of “entitlement reform”. And last but not least, claiming that President Obama is going to "lose" the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because he's been pulling our troops out of there.

CHENEY: And I also want to point out that he's gotten a pass in many ways on national security and foreign policy. He right now as Commander in Chief is performing abysmally in regard to Afghanistan and Iraq. He's about to snatch defeat from victory in Iraq by pulling everybody out and not being able to accomplish even strategic agreement for long term relationships.

WALLACE: What about his comments in the press conference where he said ask, because there was all this stuff about him being an appeaser, and in the White House press conference he said, “Ask Osama bin Laden if I'm an appeaser?”

CHENEY: Right, he wants to talk about bin Laden. It's terrific that he got bin Laden. We all give him credit for that. But Iraq and Afghanistan are two place where this President is absolutely failing and in Afghanistan, he's pulling our troops out so fast that he's putting the mission at risk. We've got these two wars that have been incredibly important and in which we have sacrificed tremendous lives and treasure. This President's performance means we very well may lose both wars. And the only reason that that's not getting covered is because his performance on the economy is so abysmal.

Juan Williams gave some weak tea response, but he's correct that the American people are tired of having our troops there after ten long years and don't agree with neocons like Cheney and the biggest drag on Obama's poll numbers are due to the economy. Naturally, no one called Cheney out for the fact that there wouldn't be any wars invasions/occupations to "lose" if her father and George W. Bush had not lied to the American public to take us into those countries in the first place.

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Another Sunday, another week where Bloody Bill Kristol proves himself to be wrong about everything. After some discussion on whether President Obama is going to have trouble being reelected and The Hill's A.B. Stoddard pointing out that he might unless he ends up being fortunate enough to run against someone who voted for Paul Ryan's budget plan, Bret Baier asks Kristol if the GOP would make make "reforming" "entitlements" into an asset. Kristol of course thinks that would be a winning issue for them.

And naturally he and Stephen Hayes refuse to admit that privatizing Medicare would be putting an end to the program as we know it and no one on the Fox News Sunday panel bothered to point out that Social Security is not responsible for any of the problems we have now with our deficit.

Jon Perr has been writing a lot about what was in Paul Ryan's budget for some time now and lays out very plainly why Hayes is not telling the truth on what his plan would do to Medicare and Social Security in one of the earlier posts he wrote on it here -- GOP Budget Proposes to Ration Medicare, Privatize Social Security.

Transcript:

BAIER: Bill, can you imagine any scenario where entitlement reform could be an asset to Republicans in 2012?

KRISTOL: Sure, because people understand, I think, and certainly the right candidate can help the American public further understand, that we need to fundamentally reform entitlements. We're $1.5 trillion in debt. Where's that debt coming from? It's coming from entitlements, which are 60 percent of the federal budget and which are going up much more quickly than the rest of the federal budget.

Despite President Obama's irresponsible domestic discretionary spending, it's entitlements that are at the core of the problem. So of course Republicans are going to run on entitlement reform, as they should, and I think they can do so successfully.

BAIER: Now, you have spoken out in favor of Congressman Paul Ryan getting in this race.Is there any development on that? Do you really believe that he's getting in?

KRISTOL: Well, the main development -- and maybe I can hold this up -- is I get sent this in the mail, a Ryan/Rubio 2012 button, which shows huge grassroots support for this effort. You know? People all over the country are having these buttons produced at their own expense.

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As Digby pointed out today, Mrs. Greenspan and John Heilemann were all aflutter over the possibility of some grand bargain being struck between John Boehner and the Obama administration on "reforming" Social Security. Go read the whole post at Hullabaloo, but I'll just add that if the administration is actually buying the fact that John Boehner can be trusted to control his TeaBircher caucus or the outside groups that will attack the administration if they make cuts to Social Security, they're living in la la land.

And if they think this is a good move politically when the public is overwhelmingly against making cuts to Social Security, they're living in some sort of alternative universe as well. Raise the income cap on the tax and long-term shortfall is solved. All the bipartisan fetishism in the world from the Villagers isn't going to bring the public around to believing that ordinary people are ever going to warm up to the idea that most of us should have to work until we're dead so that millionaires and billionaires don't have to make any "shared sacrifice" and be asked to pay more in taxes to solve our deficit problems -- and that it should instead be solved by refusing to put the money borrowed against it back into the trust fund.

Transcript via Digby.

Andrea Mitchell: Washington may be closer than we thought to doing something real about the long term budget deficit. House speaker John Boehner has reportedly given President his word that he will not exploit the politically charged issue of entitlements if Obama takes the lead.

New York Magazine national political columnist John Heilman joins me.

This could be a whole new era! Entitlement reform, on the table, in this coming budget year? What are the chances?

Heilman: I think the chances are pretty good although I don't think it's going to happen the way that Speaker Boehner would like it to happen. I don't see a whole lot of pressure on the president to do what Speaker Boehner would like to do which is to say, go first. You know, we saw in the Wall Street Journal poll in the last couple of days there's not a lot of public pressure to take on these entitlement programs and to the extent there is public pressure it's coming from the Republican base.

So I think the White House taken the attitude that they are ready to address these issues, but the Republican party is the party that's going to have to go first and I think Speaker Boehner is going to have to do that if they are going to make this progress. I think he's going to feel forced to by his constituents in the Republican party who want to see this happen.

Mitchell: Of course, the alternative is that both the White House and the Speaker stand off and play a game of "after you Alphonse" and nobody does anything and we reach a critical point here.

Heilman: Well, that's certainly possible and you know look, as I say, the White House is comfortable politically with waiting.

And look, I think the truth is that I think the president actually believes that something has to happen on this and the question of sequencing is a political question. I think it's a matter of long term policy and in fact is a matter of long term politics.

It's in the interest of both the White House and the Republican Party to eventually figure out a way as they skirmish around and figure out who's going to go first and who's going to go second and who's going to have whose back. Eventually it's in all their interest to walk off this cliff together, so to speak, although that metaphor suggests that it's in no one's interest.

Mitchell: laughter...

Heilman: I think it is in their interest to get this off the table politically. The White House would love to have deficit reduction off the table politically in 2012 because that's the only thing Republicans have to run against President Obama on.

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The next time John Boehner or Mike Pence or any of the rest of our politicians that want to join them with this talk of raising the retirement age for receiving Social Security benefits, I'd like for them to read this article first. Then maybe we can sit down and have an "adult conversation" a.k.a. one that's not full of their lies on the subject.

The myth of the Social Security system's financial shortfall:

The annual report of the Social Security Trustees is the sort of rich compendium of facts and analysis that has something for everybody, like the Bible.

In recent years, during which conservatives have intensified their efforts to destroy one of the few U.S. government programs that actually works as intended, the report's publication has become an occasion for hand-wringing and crocodile tears over the (supposedly) parlous state of the system's finances.

This year's report, which came out Thursday, is no exception. Within minutes of its release, some analysts were claiming that it projected a "shortfall" for Social Security this year of $41 billion.

[...]

The truth is that there are two separate tax programs at work here — the payroll tax and the income tax — and they affect Americans in different ways. The first pays for Social Security and the second for the rest of the federal budget.

Most Americans pay more payroll tax than income tax. Not until you pull in $200,000 or more, which puts you among roughly the top 5% of income-earners, are you likely to pay more in income tax than payroll tax. One reason is that the income taxed for Social Security is capped — this year, at $106,800. (My payroll and income tax figures come from the Brookings Institution, and the income distribution statistics come from the U.S. Census Bureau.)

Since 1983, the money from all payroll taxpayers has been building up the Social Security surplus, swelling the trust fund. What's happened to the money? It's been borrowed by the federal government and spent on federal programs — housing, stimulus, war and a big income tax cut for the richest Americans, enacted under President George W. Bush in 2001.

In other words, money from the taxpayers at the lower end of the income scale has been spent to help out those at the higher end. That transfer — that loan, to characterize it accurately — is represented by the Treasury bonds held by the trust fund.

The interest on those bonds, and the eventual redemption of the principal, should have to be paid for by income taxpayers, who reaped the direct benefits from borrowing the money.

So all the whining you hear about how redeeming the trust fund will require a tax hike we can't afford is simply the sound of wealthy taxpayers trying to skip out on a bill about to come due. The next time someone tells you the trust fund is full of worthless IOUs, try to guess what tax bracket he's in.

Go read the whole thing. Lots more there with the numbers behind the surplus and the Peterson Foundation which is itching to hand the funds over to Wall Street. Boehner and Pence's hackery from Meet the Press below the fold.

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Well isn't this just special? Here's the one place Republicans are willing to work with the Obama administration. Destroying what's left of our social safety net and Social Security if they listen to the advice of this debt commission. Here's to hoping it goes over about as well as when Bush did his tour on privatizing Social Security. This is one policy we don't need the Republicans having an opportunity to tout as a bipartisan victory.

I'd love to know which policy wonk in the Obama administration is being overpaid to think this is a good idea or that who they picked to be assigned to the deficit commission such as wingnut Alan Simpson is a good idea.

Swain: You’ve said the deficit issue that are issues number one and number two. Do you… what will it be like to be a national politics in a national era of belt tightening that lies ahead for this country?

Cornyn: I think it’s going to be very tough and one reason why I think we need to fully engage with President Obama, I hope his debt commission which will report December the first comes out with a realistic and effective ways to deal with our mounting fiscal crisis. And I think it’s a good time for Republicans and Democrats to work together to confront this because it’s not going to go away and I think that’s what the American people want us to do and what we need to do.

But it’s not going to be pleasant… uhmm…that’s ah… what we signed on for and what I think you will see Republicans and Democrats do together if the President and the Democrats are serious about it I think we will meet them more than half way.

All I can say is that if Cornyn or the Obama administration thinks that this is going to go over with anyone any better than it did for Bush when he thought it was a good idea to go on a tour talking about privatizing Social Security, they're sadly mistaken. I would also add that watching Wall Street's excesses have done nothing but add to the mistrust of privatizing those accounts. People are now well aware of what would have happened and did happen to their savings when the markets took a dump. And we haven't regulated them to this day after that happening.

Little wonder most people might not want their Social Security checks tied to Wall Street. I know I don't. If either Cornyn or the Obama administration try to heap this type of bipartisan legislation on us in the near future we all need to be picking up our phones and telling them "hell no".

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You can always count on Greta Van Susteren to allow Republicans like Mike Pence to give an interview full of lies and Republican talking points like he did here and not challenge any of them. Where to begin? How about Greece's financial collapse which Pence blames on the country adopting a Value Added Tax or VAT. I wonder why Mike Pence didn't bother to mention Wall Street and Goldman Sach's part in their demise?

Here's an article from The New York Times explaining what happened there. Wall St. Helped to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis:

Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hide their mounting debts. As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels.

Even as the crisis was nearing the flashpoint, banks were searching for ways to help Greece forestall the day of reckoning. In early November — three months before Athens became the epicenter of global financial anxiety — a team from Goldman Sachs arrived in the ancient city with a very modern proposition for a government struggling to pay its bills, according to two people who were briefed on the meeting. Read on...

No, the guy who was meeting with Wall Street hedge fund managers last month was instead blaming their problems on the taxes being too high. Despite the fact that Paul Volker has ruled out his idea of a VAT being on the table "now or for the indefinite future", the Republicans have decided this is a good campaign issue for them.

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As we've already pointed out here at C&L, President Obama has appointed a deficit commission and I agree with Susie, I don't trust any of these people, or their agenda.

Dylan Ratigan used the ongoing turmoil in Greece to play deficit hawk with Rep. Paul Ryan just as Judd Gregg did on Morning Joe not long ago. Seems to be a running theme with these right wingers. Goldman Sachs goes in and destroys Greece's economy just like Wall Street has done to the United States and use the public outrage there over what happened to justify "entitlement reform", or in other words, destroying the social safety net.

Ratigan just like Tweety is all over the map and you never know what you're going to get out of him from segment to segment. He went from talking sense with Bernie Sanders about auditing the Fed to this nonsense with the new GOP golden boy Ryan. Watching this made me angry enough to feel like going into full a full Mike Malloy mode cursing rant but I'll share with you what Dan Froomkin had to say about this deficit commission instead since I find his criticisms quite a bit more productive than ranting about how craven these people are if we're going to push back on this nonsense.

Sanctimonious Deficit Hawks Target Social Safety Net:

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