House Majority Leader Eric Cantor reaffirmed the Republican position on budget cuts this morning on Meet the Press this morning, and NBC’s David Gregory gave us a taste of the pushback the GOP can expect over the next several months.  Gregory asks Cantor whether defense spending is on the table — and when Cantor insists that it is — Gregory then asks, “Cancer research is on the table?”   Welcome to the Republicans hate sick people meme … or more accurately, welcome back:

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Don’t miss Harry Reid’s Chip Diller moment on Social Security, either. He insists that all is well while the math says otherwise, which even Gregory implicitly acknowledges. The so-called “trust fund” has enough value to pay for under four years of benefits, but it has no actual cash; it holds Treasury IOUs. Moreover, Social Security begins to run cash deficits, which will happen consistently within the next couple of years, the US government will have to issue more debt as SSA calls those IOUs to cover outlays. The crisis point won’t come in 40 years, as Reid claims, but within the next two or three years when the general fund and Social Security run deficits, when our national debt will really start to skyrocket.

Our entire entitlement system runs on fantasy math and imaginary money. We need to address it before it collapses, not after, when we won’t have the financial stability to solve the problem.

For more on this, be sure to read Charles Blahous’ Social Security: The Unfinished Work.