After the President’s remarks on the fiscal cliff this afternoon, I switched on C-SPAN to watch one Republican after another take the Senate podium to complain bitterly about the President’s “insults.” John McCain was especially outraged about Obama’s “jokes.” Here’s the video; apparently all of this whining about their precious feewings was prompted by one line:

My preference would have been to solve all these problems in the context of a larger agreement, a bigger deal, a grand bargain, whatever you want to call it, that solves our deficit problems in a balanced and responsible way. That doesn’t just deal with the taxes, but deals with the spending in a balanced way so that we can put all this behind us and just focus on growing the economy.

But with this Congress, that was obviously a little too much to hope for at this time. (Laughter.)

OUTRAGE! HOW DARE HE!

For all the whining and kooky crybaby antics from McCain and Lindsey Graham today, it’s still not clear whether we actually have a deal to avert the fiscal cliff. But Senate Republicans made one thing very clear today: their next caper will involve holding America hostage over the debt ceiling.

Two centrist Republican senators on Friday introduced a plan to reduce the growth of entitlement spending by nearly $1 trillion in exchange for an equal increase to the federal debt ceiling.

Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.) and Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) called on Congress to focus on entitlement reform after it addresses the impending expiration of the Bush-era tax rates. They identified the expiration of the federal debt ceiling as an opportunity to address the costly growth of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.