Monday was Mitt Romney's 65th birthday. Happy birthday, Mittens. In honor of his 65th birthday he announced that he would not be enrolling in Social Security or Medicare. How noble. Except, it's not.

In deference to the conservative dogs nipping his heels, Romney has endorsed the Paul Ryan Medicare plan which would voucherize Medicare and leave senior citizens floundering on their own with private insurance companies. Of course, if you asked Mitt Romney about it, what you'd get is a bunch of lies. Really awful, cynical, blatant lies. Here is a Romney campaign press release:

“There are two proposals on the table for addressing the nation’s entitlement crisis. Mitt Romney — along with a bipartisan group of leaders — has offered a solution that would introduce competition and choice into Medicare, control costs, and strengthen the program for future generations. President Obama has cut $500 billion from Medicare to fund Obamacare and created an unaccountable board with rationing power — all while America’s debt is spiraling out of control and we continue to run trillion-dollar deficits.

“If President Obama’s plan is to end Medicare as we know it, he should say so. If he has another plan, he should have the courage to put it forward.”

And as Greg Sargent points out, that's just a lie:

Get the trick here? The Romney campaign is accusing Obama of slashing Medicare, and hence “ending Medicare as we know it,” while simultaneously accusing him of failing to curb entitlement spending in ways that pose grave danger to the nation’s finances. This, even asRomney has endorsed a plan that would quasi-voucherize Medicare and end the program as we know it.

This debate is about to ramp up and yet it seems our press cannot call a lie a lie. They'll call it a falsehood, or as one headline read yesterday, a "mistruth." All of which leaves me nodding my head at Lawrence O'Donnell's rant last night about why it is that the word "lie" seems to be gone from the vocabulary of the Village press.

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Romney won't take Medicare or Social Security because he's so incredibly rich that he doesn't need it. But lots of people do, and privatized accounts and vouchers aren't going to cut it. If seniors truly understood what Mitt Romney and all of the Republican candidates had in mind for Social Security and Medicare, they'd think twice before voting for any of them. But because our political reporters have some aversion to the word "lie", they may never realize what's in store under President RomneySantorumGingrich.