Obama's "fiscal cliff" road show, Dec. 1

President Obama used his regular Saturday message to hype the phony "fiscal cliff" and to promote Republican Party framing of the deficit as an urgent priority and of tax cuts as the most important priority in the current "fiscal cliff" drama, Weekly Address: Urging Congress to Extend the Middle Class Tax Cuts 12/01/2012.

The thing that I most notice here is that the central issue of the "fiscal cliff" farce - the Grand Bargain to cut benefits on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid - isn't mentioned in the President's address. He doesn't say a word about defending benefits on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Meanwhile, Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is calling publicly for cuts in benefits to Social Security and Medicare, as Rachel Weiner reports in the Washington Post (McConnell pushes entitlement wish list 11/30/2012) quoting from a Wall Street Journal story based on a McConnell interview:

In an interview, Mr. McConnell said if the White House agrees to changes such as higher Medicare premiums for the wealthy, an increase in the Medicare eligibility age and a slowing of cost-of-living increases for programs like Social Security, Republicans would agree to include more tax revenue in the deal, though not from higher tax rates.

Tags: austerity economics, barack obama, fiscal cliff, grand bargain, medicaid, medicare, social security