A group of protesters delivered petitions with 1,600 doctors’ signatures to John Boehner’s district office yesterday, asking the House Speaker to reject additional cuts to Medicare and Medicaid as part of any debt ceiling deal. “Let’s not dismantle it, let’s try to innovate, but do not amputate this wonderful program,” Don Nguyen, the state director of Doctors for America, said to Boehner’s representative.

Throughout the debt ceiling talks, Republicans have offered a series of proposals — from Ryan’s budget, to Cut, Cap and Balance, to Boehner’s latest deficit proposal — that would significantly lower Medicare and Medicaid spending. Democrats had also reportedly endorsed a series of entitlement cuts in exchange for revenue increases, although Sen. Harry Reid’s latest plan does not include any of these reductions.

Still, Americans are deeply opposed to cutting social safety net program and have been protesting such Congressional proposals throughout the country. Below is a sampling of recent actions:

– MICHIGAN: Seniors, parents, workers, and advocates called on Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) to reject any deal to raise the debt ceiling that includes cuts in Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. [7/21/2011]

– WISCONSIN: Seniors delivered a return receipt to Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) District office in Racine, WI calling on him to return his government insurance. [7/19/2011]

– NEW MEXICO: Seniors and health advocates held a press conference in front of Rep. Steve Pearce’s (R-NM) district office calling on him to return his government insurance.” [7/14/2011]

– WISCONSIN: Advocates asked the five Wisconsin Congressmen to return their government-funded health insurance coverage for voting in favor of Paul Ryan’s plan. [7/13/2011]

– FLORIDA: Local representatives and senior groups asked members who voted for the Paul Ryan plan to return their government-sponsored insurance. [7/12/2011]

The latest July 14-17 Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 72 percent of Americans oppose cutting Medicaid spending — including 59 percent of self-identified Republicans — and 54 percent are against raising the Medicare eligibility age.

Former CBO head Douglas Holtz-Eakin appeared on Fox News this morning to hawk a National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) study, which found that some small businesses would drop coverage if their employees purchase insurance coverage through the state-based exchanges:

HOLTZ-EAKIN: Number one, every time an employee takes advantage of the exchanges, it means the taxpayers are forking out a lot of money. The subsidies are quite generous, as much as $7,000 to a person making $70,000, 10 percent of their income. So that’s a real taxpayer burden. The second is it means employers are dropping coverage. There are insurance arrangements that they already have, and they’re going to go away. One of the central promises of the Affordable Care Act was if you like your insurance, you get to keep it, and that’s increasingly not true.

Watch it:

Holtz-Eakin forgot to mention that tax payers are already “forking out a lot of money” — some $200 billion a year — to encourage employers to continue providing health insurance to their employees, most of whom would not be able to apply for subsidies within the exchanges. That’s because “subsidies aren’t available to anyone whose company offers a healthcare plan that costs less than 9.5 percent of his or her income.” So the NFIB survey and Holtz-Eakin have it backwards “employees would head to the exchanges if their companies quit offering healthcare, rather than employers dropping coverage because their employees aren’t taking it.”

And despite Holtz-Eakin’s claims to the contrary, there is very little evidence to suggest that employers would benefit from eliminating the health care benefit and making up the difference in higher wages (an added cost, particularly for higher-paid employees). As NFIB senior fellow Denny Dennis, who wrote the report, admitted on a conference call with Politico’s Jason Millman, there’s no “slam dunk” evidence that that businesses will dump coverage are a result of the law.

John Boehner’s debt ceiling proposal would add $1 trillion to the current $14.3 trillion debt limit (which would be expected to allow the government to continue borrowing into April of 2012), reduce spending immediately and cap future spending to save $1.2 trillion over 10 years, and establish a 12-member joint committee of Congress charged with reporting back to both chambers by Nov. 23 with recommendations to reduce the deficit by an additional $1.8 trillion over 10 years. The plan also calls for a vote on a constitutional balanced budget amendment before the end of 2011.

It’s a plan that the usually “mild-mannered” Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) is describing as “tantamount to a form of ‘class warfare’” that “if enacted, it could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.” Since Boehner’s blueprint contains no tax increases and his first round of cuts targets discretionary spending, the joint committee will have no choice but to achieve its $1.8 trillion in budget reductions by cutting entitlement spending, Greenstein explains:

– As a result, virtually all of that $1.8 trillion would come from entitlement programs. They would have to be cut more than $1.5 trillion in order to produce sufficient interest savings to achieve $1.8 trillion in total savings.

– To secure $1.5 trillion in entitlement savings over the next ten years would require draconian policy changes. Policymakers would essentially have three choices: 1) cut Social Security and Medicare benefits heavily for current retirees, something that all budget plans from both parties (including House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s plan) have ruled out; 2) repeal the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansions while retaining its measures that cut Medicare payments and raise tax revenues, even though Republicans seek to repeal many of those measures as well; or 3) eviscerate the safety net for low-income children, parents, senior citizens, and people with disabilities. There is no other plausible way to get $1.5 trillion in entitlement cuts in the next ten years. [...]

In short, the Boehner plan would force policymakers to choose among cutting the incomes and health benefits of ordinary retirees, repealing the guts of health reform and leaving an estimated 34 million more Americans uninsured, and savaging the safety net for the poor. It would do so even as it shielded all tax breaks, including the many lucrative tax breaks for the wealthiest and most powerful individuals and corporations.

Congressional Quarterly’s Richard E. Cohen also reports that Boehner’s powerful panel has “no precise parallel” and will have to overcome severe logistical hurdles. “The panel would then be required to complete its work before Thanksgiving — a period of less than four months that includes the monthlong congressional August recess, two additional weeks of scheduled House breaks and three other weeks when the Senate is slated to be gone.”

It would also “have to work with existing House and Senate committees with longstanding jurisdictional claims on the issues in play and build majority support in both chambers of a divided Congress. The GOP has already cautioned that it “will not appoint any members who will approve tax hikes,” a selection criterion that “Reid and Pelosi would most certainly not follow.” The committee’s recommendations would then face up-or-down floor votes in the House and Senate without additional amendments.