Good cop, bad cop on Medicare. Guess which is which. (Joshua Roberts/REUTERS)

What House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) giveth in terms of helpful statements, he taketh away. Here's a very good question : "Will Dems give up their political advantage on Medicare in debt limit fight?"

That's prompted by this:

At his weekly Capitol briefing with reporters Tuesday, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) confirmed what aides in both parties have been telling reporters: Cuts to Medicare will be on the table in deficit and debt limit negotiations, led by Vice President Joe Biden. After arguing that Democrats made significant headway toward extending Medicare's solvency with the health care law, Hoyer said, "Do I believe that there are other things we can do related to Medicare? The answer is I do. I'm not going to get into articulating each one, but my expectation is they will be under discussion by the Biden group." .... If a grand bargain on spending includes Medicare benefit cuts that both parties buy into, it will further expose the shambolic nature of the last two years' politics. But more to the point, it will blunt Democrats' ability to run against the House Republican vote to privatize, and, yes slash Medicare. And it will hurt Senate Democrats, many more of whom will be up for re-election in 2012 than will their Republicans colleagues. Their opponents won't have Paul Ryan's budget to answer for—but they will have the Dems' vote for the deficit grand bargain, and the Medicare cuts therein.

Let's also posit that if the Dems give up anything as big as actual Medicare cuts in these negotiations, they'll pretty much have given up the whole ball of wax on negotiating anything with the GOP from here on out. When they should actually be adding weight to the anvil that's already hanging around the collective Republican neck, they're making noises about conceding that critical ground. As Beutler notes in this article, not every means of "fixing" Medicare involves benefits cuts, but many of them that have been floated thus far do.

We already know that Republicans are planning on attacking Democrats over the Medicare Advantage cuts in the Affordable Care Act. If they'll attack on that, of course they'll turn around and attack on any cuts. As Beutler, "If Democrats sign on broadly to more Medicare cuts in the Biden talks, it'll give the guys who want to privatize Medicare plenty of ammunition."