In the News: GOP Leader Boehner Spells Out Agenda to Cut Social Security, Repeal Patients' Rights

House Republican Leader John Boehner spelled out an agenda for America: cuts to your Social Security, a repeal of new patients' rights and protections from insurance industry abuses through health reform, and other than that ... "few concrete thoughts," according to Washington Post senior political reporter Dan Balz.

So far, Congressional Republicans have shown Americans they are for: apologizing to BP, privatizing Social Security, downplaying the worst fiscal crisis that cost 8 million jobs (calling it an "ant"), and opposing jobs legislation that could prevent a double dip recession.

Washington Post -- The partisan rancor beneath Boehner's rhetoric:

... Boehner listed three priorities. First, he said, was a renewed commitment to fiscal discipline -- a test his party badly flunked the last time it was in the majority. Second, he said, was to engage in "an adult conversation with the American people" about the need to rein in entitlement spending. And third, he wants to increase bipartisan cooperation in the House.

He offered few concrete thoughts about the GOP agenda but promised that the party will make that clearer before November ...

He was explicit about health care. "We believe that the health-care bill needs to be repealed and replaced," he said. Beyond saying Republicans would scrub the budget for wasteful spending, a pledge regularly made and ignored by politicians of both parties, he offered no examples of what programs Republicans would actually cut.

Nor did he seem eager to tip his hand on the terms of entitlement reform. In his interview with the Tribune-Review, Boehner volunteered that the Social Security retirement age might need to be raised to 70 for younger workers but he would go no further.

Asked whether partial privatization of Social Security, which Republicans pushed unsuccessfully in 2005, would be part of a GOP agenda, he twice replied, "I have no idea."

Later, he called back to clarify, saying that what he meant to say was that, until Republicans complete their process of soliciting ideas from the American people, there will be no answer to that question. "We're not going to prejudge what's going to come out of this listening project."

That hardly sounded like a politician eager to provoke an adult conversion with the American people...