Default: No Aug. 3 Social Security Checks?

13 July 2011 |permalink | email article

Republican negotiators are gambling that President Obama will cave on taxes because he’s done it before and they believe they can make that happen, egged on by Republican presidential candidates. They may be in for a shock because all signs suggest that Obama’s use of the bully pulpit and staking out centrist ground on the debt ceiling is working.

If Republicans don’t relent on the debt limit fight the president lobbed a grenade into the fight Tuesday when the CBS News anchor Scott Pelley asked Obama if he could guarantee that retirees and the disabled would get 27 million Social Security checks due to go out Aug. 3 – the day after the country’s debt limit is reached. “I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be any money in the coffers to do it,” Obama said in an interview at the White House.

Any mystery, Talking Points Memo reported, about whether Obama would clarify the stakes and increase the pressure on Republicans to drop their ideological purity, should be considered as upped. Speaker John Boehner told House Republicans Tuesday that he was “pissed” over being unable to reach a “grand bargain,” warning that the GOP might lose leverage nearing the Aug. 2 deadline with Wall Street and business leaders pressuring them to cut a deal. Ambitious Leader Eric Cantor said unless Democrats insist on tax increases, “there is no viable path forward.” 

Murdoch’s Watergate?

On what is certain to be one of the most sensational parliamentary hearings in years a parliamentary committee will call Rupert Murdoch, his son James and Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International, to testify next week about accusations of phone hacking and corruption at the News International papers. On Tuesday former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown dropped a bomb shell, alleging that a Murdoch paper, the Sunday Times, employed “known criminals” to gather personal information on his bank account, legal files and tax affairs. Carl Bernstein, on MSNBC last night, seemed to sugges Murdoch may be on the verge of his own Watergate scandal.

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