Playing in Sand on the Economy

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

This video of an interview with Dean Baker, co-director for the Center for Economic Policy and Research, discussing the debt ceiling and holding the federal budget hostage is a good discussion of what could happen if the debt ceiling is not raised. Baker  clearly in the side of raising the debt ceiling but if it comes down to a choice of default and Social Security, he would choose saving Social Security.

There are those who are convinced that the GOP will not allow a default to happen and there has been a lot of pressure from Wall St and banking lobbyists to not play games with this. There is a lot of mistrust that Obama is playing some game that will end up slicing deeply into Social Security and Medicare to make it look as though he had no choice. He does have a choice to insist on a clean bill to raise the debt ceiling and take Social Security and Medicare off the bargaining table. If he doesn’t, as Paul Krugman said, “he might as well move out of the White House, and hand the keys over to the Tea Party.”

1 comment

    • on 05/19/2011 at 07:34
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