American political history can be likened to a good (or bad) conversation: an evolving interchange among those with varying points of view. Sometimes the discussion is strident; other times collaborative.

Think of ongoing heated debates from slavery through segregation toward civil rights and beyond; or ongoing labor debates from the 10-hour day through child labor laws, workplace safety, tenure, benefits, pension rights.

When political conversations become tone-deaf monologues, progress is tough. Madame de Stael, an expert on conversations in the 18th century Enlightenment salons of Paris, once said that the art of conversation depends on the ability to interrupt, thus allowing a better interchange of ideas. Ironically, that seeming violation of polite manners cut through the monologues and made for a back-and-forth conversation as a vibrant interplay of ideas.

She even joked that it was difficult to have such a conversation with someone speaking German since all the preliminaries in a sentence could not be fully understood until the speaker finally got to the enlightening verb at the end of the sentence. Seeing the verb as the action word, she humorously teased that you could not interrupt the unending monologue till you finally figured out what was intended by that long-awaited verb. So you could not intelligently interrupt to move the conversation along.

Think of current political debates. Sometimes, the anti-progressive and anti-labor voices seem so shrill and long-winded that it becomes hard to have a real political conversation: “Please don’t interrupt my venomous tirade!” Let’s look at attempted political conversations on budgets, health care, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in that context.

Paul Ryan’s latest budget, his third edition, offers nothing new. It passed in the House 221 to 207 on a strictly party-line vote — certainly not as an evolving proposal, but merely a repeated attempt to privatize Medicare by turning it into a voucher system, fast-track cuts to Social Security, repeal health care reform, continue the sequester through 2030 but exempt pentagon cuts, all the while giving $5.7 trillion in new tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations.

It’s a budget that does nothing to create jobs, an austerity budget that indicates it will pay down the deficit in 10 years but without new revenue. This means it would be paid for on the backs of the working poor and middle-class Americans, even as more and more economists are declaring the austerity mentality a failure both in deficit-ridden European countries and the U.S.

The Obama budget, acknowledging the persistent jobs crisis, provides $50 billion for infrastructure investments and billions more to encourage public-private partnerships in manufacturing and job training and boosts the minimum wage to $9 an hour. It has been described as a budget that helps break the false choice between deficits and job creation. The Obama budget also calls for closing tax loopholes and for tax hikes on the wealthy to pay for his spending proposals.

The problem is the one thing Republicans hate more than raising taxes is government funding to create jobs.

Like a lot of Democrats, AFT President Randi Weingarten applauds the Obama budget for “critical investments that will put Americans back to work, rebuild the middle class and strengthen our communities and public schools,” but expresses concern about proposals that jeopardize Social Security and Medicare benefits for seniors.

For Democrats, the Obama budget has caused a stir and created a dialogue unlike the Republican monolithic budget monologue.

Lots of conversations are going on about President Obama’s proposal to change the calculation of our Social Security COLA (cost-of-living adjustment) from the present Consumer Price Index (CPI) to the chained CPI, which would result in smaller annual increases.

Under the chained CPI, benefits for 2014 would be approximately $3 lower a month in 2014 and about $30 lower by 2023 according to the Congressional Budget Office. The impact of the slower-growing measure increases over time. Since the soaring cost of health care is not included in the CPI, that severely impacts Social Security benefits in the future.

Under the president’s budget, wealthier Americans would pay higher premiums for Medicare Part B starting in 2017 when everyone would face a higher deductible. Those increases are balanced by an end to the drug benefit gap known as the “donut hole” by 2015, five years sooner than under current law, and a speed-up of getting generic medicines to the market.

Trying to find a “grand bargain” between these two budgets will be a Herculean task.

In the meantime, seniors are being urged to become part of the conversation: to tell the president and legislators that they oppose the chained CPI and other cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Dealing with our illogical opponents — e.g., “Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare!” — in the latest political conversations and public debates, we might be tempted to “wait for the verb,” but we can’t afford to. We need to interrupt the monologue and take action now, before the damage is done.