We’re just going to get trial balloon after trial balloon until next Monday, when the President is set to announce his batch of deficit reduction ideas for the Catfood Commission II. Now the balloon has flown all the way to England, and the offices of the Financial Times.

The most dangerous plans I’ve seen coming out of the debt limit talks are chained CPI and the Medicaid blended rate. I’ve written extensively about chained CPI, which would cause a Social Security benefit cut of hundreds of dollars a year for the average beneficiary. The way that can be most easily combated is by calling it what it is – a tax increase. Only $100 billion of the $300 billion projected savings in chained CPI comes from Social Security; the other $200 billion comes from the effect of slowing the cost of living adjustment in other programs, including… tax brackets.

Maybe you think those leading Democrats aren’t being sincere about this. I actually am fine thinking that they are. Because this has now become the dividing line in American politics: one side wants to destroy the safety net, privatize everything, kill the unions, cut taxes for the rich and drown government in the bathtub. The other side doesn’t want to end Medicare. They don’t really want to expand it, they don’t even mind cutting it, hopefully to make it more efficient. They just don’t want to end it. Clearly you see how far to the right that dividing line has moved.