”I cannot guarantee that those [Social Security] checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue,” the president told CBS News anchor Scott Pelley , ”because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.”
That is quite simply an easily refutable bold faced lie.
The truth? As Cato Institute Senior Fellow Michael Tanner points out, the U.S. Treasury estimates that they will collect approximately $203 billion in the month of August. During that same month, interest payments on the debt will total $29 billion.
In other words, there will more than enough money to meet our interest obligations, as well as payments for Social Security, Medicare and military salaries. The real problem is that the government is scheduled to spend $307 billion the same month,
leaving a shortfall of $104 billion.
The only way Grandma and Grandpa will get stiffed is if Obama and Geithner make a concious effort to stiff them, more than enough money will be in the coffers to pay them.
More of that demagoguing apparently occurred on Wednesday. According to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), Mr. Obama “abruptly walked out” of the latest debt ceiling negotiations, after telling Mr. Cantor that no other president would put up with the way he was being treated by the majority leader. He then warned Cantor he would take his case “to the American people.”
Make that some of the American people. For a president who has made a career out of playing one group of Americans off another, his “case” will always come down to the ultimate expression of demagoguery: “us” against “them.”
For as much as they will give me for Social Security, they can take it and shove it. Give me a free, open economy, where I have a chance to survive on my own, and let me keep what I earn for myself and family stick the Federal government dog collar you want to put around my neck up there with your Social Security.
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