I guess I’ve been remiss in writing about the American Jobs Act (AJA), but then I haven’t written anything about Libyan admission into the United Nations, either, which is a policy I’m sure somebody somewhere agrees with, but which also isn’t going to happen.

I was pleasantly surprised that President Obama in his deficit speech today didn’t publicly endorse cuts to Social Security benefits or call for any specific major cuts to Medicare benefits. But are they really off the table?

The threat to Medicare is very real and pressing. Over the past several months more and more political forces in Washington have being slowly lining up behind a campaign to raise the Medicare eligibility age.

This most recent effort really got started when Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) put forward a bill to raise the Medicare retirement age in late May.

We now have additional proof that raising the Medicare eligibility age would be a ridiculous program on all levels. It would not only cause needless anxiety and suffering to 65 and 66 year-olds, it would not achieve its alleged goal of saving money. In fact, it would increase costs almost everywhere in the health care system.

The President could of course say that he wouldn’t sign such a package. And he plans, according to these reports, not to negotiate with Republicans but to make the case to the public that they’re blocking progress. Given that the only things that have passed in this Presidency have been the result of intense negotiation, that means these are more political ploys than actual proposals. And again, it would have been nice to see public works ideas when they had a chance to pass.

President Obama will give a “jobs speech” in September. And yet his last half-dozen speeches have been “jobs speeches,” where he castigates Congress for doing nothing, says he has a raft of ideas that Congress can get done “right now” that he would sign, and says that they involve compromise. And yes, among those ideas is deficit reduction, which he mentions during every jobs section of the speeches, usually first. Then he goes on to say that deficit reduction is not the only thing we can do.

If this is different, if it actually offers newer ideas than an infrastructure bank and extending unemployment insurance and the payroll tax cut, if it touts something other than trade deals and patent reform, that would be something to write about.

If you think that the committee is designed to fail, these are good members to that end. If you think that the entire exercise is a ploy to cut entitlements and lessen small-d democratic accountability, you can see that at work here as well. In that sense, ultimately the specific members of the committee don’t really matter.

Via everywhere, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has chosen Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA), John Kerry (D-MA) and Max Baucus (D-MT) for the Super Congress, the bipartisan committee charged with finding at least $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years. They will make up 1/4 of the 12-member committee: the other Majority and Minority Leaders in each chamber of Congress will chose the other nine.

These things don’t work against Republicans the same way. Heck, they proposed earlier in the year to end Medicare and turn it into a coupon, and they’re still banging out press releases on how Obama will cut your Medicare. This is what I meant by saying that the grand bargain deal, even though it hasn’t yet been consummated, will have damaging knock-on effects for years.

The insane belief common among many of the beltway pundits and politicians that the American people actually want a “grand bargain” or a “super Congress” to cut our entitlement programs has absolutely no basis in reality. It is purely a fantasy created people with lots of money, who don’t think they will ever have trouble affording the basic necessities after they retire.