Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has named his picks to the "super committee" charged with making deficit reduction recommendations.

Reid named Washington Sen. Patty Murray and center-right Max Baucus, who the Post's Rosalind Helderman today (8/10/11) calls a "natural choice," given that he chairs the Finance Committee. The New York Times is a little more helpful, pointing out that Baucus

broke with other Democrats and supported tax cuts enacted in 2001 under President George W. Bush. He also worked with Republicans in 2003 to pass legislation that added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.

This is important for anyone who thinks that the tax cuts and drug benefit contributed greatly to the deficit problem.

Reid also picked Massachusetts' John Kerry, about whom the Post writes:

Kerry comes as something of a surprise, since he has focused more closely on foreign relations. However, as a respected former presidential candidate, his selection could help appease liberals.

I'm not sure how Kerry would "appease liberals."  In this particular case, the main issues are protecting Social Security and Medicare. And as of Sunday on Meet the Press, Kerry's view on that was that

the real problem for our country is not the short-term debt. We can deal with that. It's the long-term debt. It's the structural debt of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid measured against the demographics of our nation.

It's not clear how picking someone with that misleading perspective is supposed to "appease liberals."

It's an article of faith in mainstream media discussions of the budget: Social Security and Medicare are the "entitlements" driving our debt problems. That's not really true, but that's overwhelmingly the starting point for these discussions. Occasionally, perhaps by accident, someone questions that assumption.

That's what happened on NPR's Morning Edition on Monday (8/8/11), when Rep. Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) was interviewed by Steve Inskeep about, among other things, the entitlement burden.

Read what happened--or listen to the excerpt below:

INSKEEP: Congressman, if I can, we've just got a few seconds. You have mentioned defense spending. You've mentioned tax increases. Those are two areas of disagreement. The biggest part of the federal budget is entitlements...

FRANK: No, wrong. I'm sorry. The Defense budget is bigger than Medicare, and Social Security is, in fact, self-financing, still is.

INSKEEP: Let's stipulate for this conversation: a very, very, very, very, very big part of the budget is entitlements. Democrats are seen as resisting cuts. Is your side--in a couple of seconds--going to appoint people to the special committee who are ready to make a deal?

FRANK: I am not going to tell an 80-year-old woman living on $19,000 a year that she gets no cost-of-living, or that a man who has been doing physical labor all his life and is now at a 67-year-old retirement--which is where Social Security will be soon--that he has to work four or five more years.

But I disagree with you that in terms of draining on the budget, Social Security is largely as self-financed...

INSKEEP: OK.

FRANK: ...and the military budget is larger than Medicare. So demonizing entitlements and saying that--in fact, here's the deal...

INSKEEP: Congressman, I really have to cut you off there. But I do...

FRANK: Well, I wish you wouldn't ask these complicated questions with five seconds to go.

INSKEEP: We'll come back and bring you back for more. Always a pleasure to talk with you.

The roundtable panel on ABC's This Week (5/29/11) spent some time talking about the politics of Medicare, specifically the idea that the recent Democratic victory in a special Congressional election in New York could mean that Paul Ryan's Medicare plan might be a tremendous liability for the GOP.

One of the most prevalent talking points from the Republican side is to complain that while Ryan's plan might have its flaws, at least they have something--unlike the Democrats. It was a point that ABC reporter Jonathan Karl passed along as fact:

[Bill Clinton] said that I hope Democrats don't use this as an excuse to do nothing. And that is exactly what Democrats are doing right now. There is no Democratic plan on reforming Medicare; we're waiting for the president to come out with a plan. The president's old budget lost 97-0 in a vote in the Senate, so, you know, I mean--Republicans are scared. They are definitely scared. But there is nothing coming from the other side.

Most people remember a big national debate over healthcare happened not too long ago. The law that passed--the Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare" to its GOP critics--included several provisions intended to control the cost of healthcare, including Medicare. This was part of the reason Republicans were screaming about "death panels."

The parts of the Affordable Care Act that pertain to shrinking the cost of Medicare have been pretty well-explained for a while now. A recent piece from the Kaiser Health News explains how the Independent Payment Advisory Board created by the law would work:

Q: What will IPAB do?

A: Beginning with fiscal 2015, if Medicare is projected to grow too quickly, the IPAB will make binding recommendations to reduce spending. Those recommendations will be sent to Capitol Hill at the beginning of each year, and if Congress doesn’t like them, it must pass alternative cuts--of the same size--by August. A supermajority of the Senate can also vote to amend the IPAB recommendations. If Congress fails to act, the secretary of Health and Human Services is required to implement the cuts by default.

This (and more) was explained in a Washington Post column by Ezra Klein in April. Igor Volsky at Think Progress wrote a post last year showing how Medicare cost containment will work. There's no shortage of information explaining how this will work now that it is law. One could argue that none of it will work, of course, but that's not the same as saying there is no plan but the Paul Ryan plan. That's what Republicans want people to believe--and reporters like Jonathan Karl are doing their best to help.

Few pieces better illustrate the uselessness of so much corporate media political journalism than Kathleen Hennessey's piece in the L.A. Times (4/4/11) on Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's deficit reduction plan.

The piece is headlined "House Republican Budget Plan Would Revamp Medicare," and the lead explains that the GOP budget proposal outlined by Ryan "includes an overhaul of Medicare and Medicaid and would aim to chop at least $4 trillion from the federal deficit over the next decade.""Revamp," an "overhaul"--well, that sounds good, doesn't it? How does Ryan plan to do that, exactly?

Despite reporting that Ryan's "broad overview" offered "the clearest picture yet" of Republican deficit-reduction plans, the piece is far from clear: Hennessey reports that Ryan is suggesting "changes to entitlement programs"--"dramatic changes"--and is "addressing the rising costs of the program." Then, in the seventh paragraph, we get this:

Under the proposed rework of the Medicare program, seniors would chose from several federally subsidized health plans. The changes would take effect in 2021 and would not affect people who are 55 or older now, Ryan said.

Oh, OK--so how's that going to save $4 trillion? The piece doesn't say--that's the full description.

Then in the 26th paragraph, we get a quote from a partisan critic of Ryan's plan, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D.-Md.), who says that the plan cuts "health security for seniors." He's not allowed to get any more specific than that, but Ryan gets four paragraphs of rebuttal to Van Hollen's one paragraph of vague criticism, starting with:

Ryan described the Medicare plan as a version of a "premium support" system he crafted along with former Clinton administration budget director Alice Rivlin. He acknowledged the proposal would shift more of the burden for healthcare costs to seniors, saying the wealthiest seniors would bear the largest portion.

"More for the poor, more for people who are sick, and we don't give as much to the people who are wealthy," Ryan said. "This saves Medicare."

Whoa, whoa, wait a second--"shift more of the burden for healthcare costs to seniors"? Why is this the first we're hearing about this, in the 27th paragraph of a 31-paragraph article?

Ryan's plan is not very hard to explain: He wants to replace Medicare with a system where seniors would receive vouchers to buy health insurance. As the cost of health insurance rises every year, the value of the vouchers would rise by not as much. Eventually the difference between the value of the vouchers and the cost of buying health insurance, along with a similar scheme for cutting Medicaid reimbursements, would amount to $4 trillion--which would be the amount that would come out of the pockets of seniors and the poor, plus the amount of healthcare they would do without.

That's what the L.A. Times means by "revamping." But if the paper explained that to its readers, they would mostly think Ryan's idea was a terrible one. And that would be biased--so it's better to leave the readers not knowing any more than they did before they read the article.

Bob Herbert, today in the New York Times (1/25/11):

There has always been feverish opposition on the right to Social Security. What is happening now, in a period of deficit hysteria, is that this crucial retirement program is being dishonestly lumped together with Medicare as an entitlement program that is driving federal deficits.

He's right. Where did I last read someone trying to pull off that dishonest accounting? Oh yeah--it was in yesterday's New York Times. Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported on a poll that found people unwilling to support cuts to

Medicare and Social Security, the programs that directly touch millions of lives and are the biggest drivers of the long-term deficit.

Today the New York Times reports on the debate over spending, deficits and the State of the Union (1/24/11):

The public itself seems split, or perhaps confused. Americans overwhelmingly say that in general, they prefer cutting government spending to paying higher taxes, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published last week. Yet their preference for spending cuts, even in programs that benefit them, dissolves when they are presented with specific options related to Medicare and Social Security, the programs that directly touch millions of lives and are the biggest drivers of the long-term deficit.

Social Security is not a big 'driver of the long-term deficit,' especially when compared with Medicare, which is a far more serious concern.

More to the point: In the poll cited (which was reported by the Times last week), the public was asked about cuts to Social Security, Medicare or the military. Opposition to cutting spending did not "dissolve"; the public picked cuts to the military by, as the Times put it, "a large margin."

If the public is indeed "confused" by anything, it could be the fact that, in the debate over cutting government spending, their preferred option-- cutting the miltary budget-- finds little support in official Washington, and is mostly ignored by a media more focused on the apparent necessity of cutting Social Security.

While within the power-friendly environs of the corporate-funded Newseum, congressmembers John D. Rockefeller IV, Tim Pawlenty and Mary L. Landrieu probably felt pretty good about their ability to field such softballs from ABC's George Stephanopoulos as "What's the problem with the public health option?"

But upon leaving corporate TV's criticism-free zone, where such lies as Rockefeller's statement that "Medicare is gonna start going broke in 2017, which is like the day after tomorrow," pass completely unchallenged, they each were questioned by real-life journalist Sam Husseini of WashingtonStakeout.com (9/15/09).

Compare the treatment described above with Husseini's calm but determined questioning of the pols:

Sam Husseini: Health insurance mandates--don't they end up being a subsidy for the insurance companies, because you're mandating that people go out and buy their product?

Mary Landrieu: ...I'm not carrying water for the insurance companies....

SH: You say you're not carrying water, but your No. 1 contributor is JP Morgan Chase, PACs and individuals associated.... And you've precluded the Medicare-for-all type option. Why shouldn't somebody conclude that you are doing the bidding of the financial industry?

And to Rockefeller's platitude, "Don't worry about the insurance companies. Believe me, we're going to take care of them," Husseini responds in a most un-Stephanopoulos manner:

You say not to worry about the insurance companies, but even though you obviously come from a very wealthy family, you've raised money for your campaigns--the No. 1 sector, according to Open Secrets, is finance and insurance. Why shouldn't it be seen that a lot of people in Congress are in effect doing the bidding of the insurance companies?