Keller @ Large: The Debt Ceiling's Effect On Social Security Checks
BOSTON (CBS) - Amid the avalanche of increasingly strident political rhetoric coming out of the latest partisan fiasco in Washington, one line in particular seems to have really struck a chord with the public.
In an interview Tuesday with CBS News, President Obama was asked if he could guarantee that social security checks would still go out next month if he and Congress fail to agree on a plan to raise the debt ceiling. His response: "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue, because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it."
Is that the truth, or just a political scare tactic, the same stunt Republicans are pulling when they claim any sort of tax increase is a "job killer"?
Listen to Keller @ Large
Podcast
I yield the floor to the Pulitzer Prize-winning website Politifact.com, a non-partisan fact-checking service.
Their research concludes, "The critics likely have a point when they say Obama is playing up the risk to the most sympathetic potential victims. While it's not a certainty that the Obama administration could prioritize cutting checks to seniors, there's a reasonable shot that the administration could do it. On the other hand, doing so would likely cause a lot of collateral damage to other American creditors, federal workers, students, Pentagon vendors and countless others -- and could also hamper the broader economy at a particularly sensitive time. The president is probably justified in saying that the possibility of an un-raised debt ceiling jeopardizes Social Security checks -- after all, it hasn't happened before, so no one knows for sure. But we also think the president probably has tools at his disposal to avoid the worst-case scenario for seniors that he expresses concern about. Acknowledging that there are a lot of uncertainties, we rate his statement Half True."
Great - a half-truth on a crucial issue from the president, to go along with the half-truths and outright lies coming from both sides of the aisle in Congress.
And they wonder why people have more confidence in lawn fertilizer than they do in Washington.
