Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), the GOP leader, says that Medicare is “on the table in discussions related to the debt ceiling.”

“We are discussing a package that will begin to deal with the deficit and debt,” McConnell said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “To get my vote to raise the debt ceiling, for whatever that’s worth, my one vote, Medicare will need to be a part of it.”

“We all know Medicare is going to change, it’s got to change,” McConnell continued. “The one thing we know we can’t do is nothing, and our Democratic friends in the Senate have no plan at all. The president, to his credit, is at the table discussing with us the way in which you save Medicare. Medicare is going down. Doing nothing is not a plan, and we’re going to negotiate the contours of the plan in these negotiations.”

What about the Ryan budget? “I’m personally very comfortable with the way Paul Ryan would structure it in the out years,” McConnell said. “But we have a Democratic president. We’re going to have to negotiate with him on the terms of changing Medicare so we can save Medicare.”

“This is an opportunity,” he added, “to come together on a bipartisan basis like Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill did in 1983 to save Social Security for another generation. They came together, made an important adjustment.”

“And by the way, all this talk about next year’s election? After participating in raising the age limit for Social Security, Reagan the next year carried 49 out of 50 states. Anything we agree to do together, David, will not be an issue in next year’s election. This is about the future of the country, not about the election a year and a half from now.”