Obama Preys On Retirees’ Fears

Corbett B. Daly at CBS News:

“I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved [the debt] issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley.

This is a blatant lie for the following reasons:

First, stopping payments by August 3rd is logistically impossible. We’re talking about ~70 million checks being issued. A private company could not pull that off, much less the Social Security Administration.

Second, these funds are not on the table. There is absolutely no way either party is going to allow social security checks to not be payed out. We will have to cut spending if a deal is not reached by August 2nd, but social security is not going anywhere. The US Government will rake in about $180MM in revenue for August. Servicing the debt is “only” about $29MM, and social security payouts account for almost $50MM. Our total expenditures for August are about $310MM ¹. Much more likely to be cut are things like departmental and agency funding (DOL, EPA, etc).

Lastly, when social security was implemented, we were promised that the funds were in a “lock box”. Isn’t suggesting that we need to raise the debt limit to service social security tantamount to admitting there is no money in the lock box? Obama is admitting that we are borrowing money to pay social security benefits. Social security is a system that you pay into your whole life, and collect on when you retire. What happened to the money in the lock box?