A slew of Republicans are trying to hold an increase in the nation’s debt ceiling — which will need to pass Congress in the coming months — hostage for various demands. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), for instance, said that he wants Social Security cuts in return for voting to raise the debt limit, while House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) wants “fiscal controls.”

In reality, the GOP will have to accede to an increase in the debt limit, as failure to enact one ultimately leads to the U.S. defaulting on its debt, and the many profound consequences that such a default would entail. Ryan himself said last week that “you can’t not raise the debt ceiling. Default is the unworkable solution.” Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) said Republicans need to act like “adults” when it comes to the debt ceiling.

But that hasn’t stopped some Republicans from making truly outlandish demands in return for their vote to increase the ceiling. The newest one is a call that the ceiling not be raised unless Congress begins the approval process for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution:

One way it could get done, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on Fox News Sunday, is tying a balanced-budget rule to any agreement by Republicans to raise the debt ceiling. “I can’t imagine voting to raise the debt ceiling unless we’re going to change our ways in Washington,” Paul said. “I am proposing that we link to raising the debt ceiling — that we link a balanced budget rule, an ironclad rule that they can’t evade.” Not a bad idea, suggested [Rep. Jason] Chaffetz (R-UT), who said, “I think we need to be moving in that direction.”

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) said today on WND radio that, “I would like to see a balanced budget constitutional amendment” in return for raising the debt ceiling. Listen here:

It’s bad enough that Republicans are holding the debt ceiling — and therefore the credit worthiness of the U.S. — hostage, but to do so over a cockamamie constitutional amendment that would be completely disastrous in practice is even worse.

Not only would a balanced budget amendment take forever to pass, since it would have to be approved by 3/4ths of the states, it would be incredibly destructive by preventing the government from running a deficit when the situation calls for it (such as now, as the country tries to recover from a financial crisis). “The amendment’s requirement that the federal government annually spend no more than it collects is, quite simply, insane. Debt in itself is not harmful, neither for governments nor for households,” wrote Scott Galupo, a former staffer for Boehner.

Bruce Bartlett, a former economic official in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, laid out in excruciating detail why such an amendment makes no sense (including that it would make recessions worse and be completely unenforceable) before concluding that proposing one is just a “ploy by Republicans to avoid explaining how spending should be cut or taxes raised to actually achieve budget balance.”

And yet, some Republicans would threaten the credit of the entire nation by claiming that this unworkable idea is the only thing that can convince them to increase the debt limit.

Last week, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) said that he believes the retirement age for Social Security needs to be increased — despite the regressive nature and complete lack of need for such a move — because young people “will live to be more than 100.” “They’ll be replacing body parts like we do tires,” Daniels said.

Last night, Daniels was joined by another governor who may have his eye on the 2012 Republican nomination for president: Tim Pawlenty. During an interview with CNN’s Elliot Spitzer, Pawlenty said that, due to the nation’s fiscal position, young people will have to “correlate your retirement…to life expectancy“:

There’s other things that we can do that I think most Americans, Republicans and Democrats — because look, we’re in a hole. And we don’t have perfect options. We’re going to have to do some other things too. I would say that the new entrants into the program, we’re going to correlate your retirement. Not for the people already there, to life expectancy in the future in some reasonable way. And there’s other things like that. You add them up and they get to go a long ways towards solving the problem.

Watch it:

Pawlenty never used the words “raise the retirement age,” but “correlate your retirement…to life expectancy” means precisely the same thing. Like Daniels (and many others on both ends of the political spectrum), Pawlenty is relying on a faulty understanding of America’s increasing life expectancy to push a regressive cut in Social Security that will disproportionately impact those most in need of the program.

While average life expectancy has indeed been rising, the increase is largely a result of a significant rise in life expectancy among upper income earners. Middle- and low-income workers have not seen the same increases. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research put it, “there has been a sharp rise in inequality in life expectancy by income over the last three decades that mirrors the growth in inequality in income.”

So, in essence, raising the retirement age punishes low-income, blue-collar workers because high-income, white-collar workers are living longer. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman asked, “you’re going to tell janitors to work until they’re 70 because lawyers are living longer than ever?”

Social Security benefits are already quite modest, as the average benefit is “only about $1,100 a month, or $14,000 a year” — that’s less than 30 percent above the poverty line. While there are changes that can be made to make Social Security a more progressive program that does a better job of protecting society’s most vulnerable, raising the retirement age is certainly not one of them.