Mr. President: Take Social Security and Medicare off the damned table in no uncertain terms.

[ProSense]

69. There is some massive he said she said in that article, but this is the best part:

The Republican version of reality goes, briefly, like this: Boehner and Obama shook hands on a far-reaching deal to rewrite the tax code, roll back the cost of entitlements and slash deficits. But then Obama, reacting to pressure from Democrats in Congress, panicked at the last minute and suddenly demanded that Republicans accede to hundreds of billions of dollars in additional tax revenue. A frustrated Boehner no longer believed he could trust the president’s word, and he walked away. Obama moved the goal posts, is the Republican mantra.

<...>

On entitlements too they had moved closer to a final deal. The White House agreed to cut at least $250 billion from Medicare in the next 10 years and another $800 billion in the decade after that, in part by raising the eligibility age. The administration had endorsed another $110 billion or so in cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs, with $250 billion more in the second decade. And in a move certain to provoke rebellion in the Democratic ranks, Obama was willing to apply a new, less generous formula for calculating Social Security benefits, which would start in 2015. (The White House had rejected Boehner’s bid to raise the retirement age.) This wasn’t quite enough for Boehner, nor was it as extensive as what the Gang of Six had proposed. But the speaker’s team didn’t consider the differences to be insurmountable, assuming the two sides could also settle on a revenue number.

If the article is to be believed and taken at face value in its entirety, it appears the President rejected a proposal to raise the Social Security age.

Like I said, these discussions aren't so much about demanding the President protect Social Security as much as they are attempts to prove that he has no intention of doing so. That is why what he says will not matter to those pushing this angle. They'll simply parse his words and claim he still intends to cut the program. It will always be wait-and-see, just as it was during the President's first term.