"Blocking debt limit increase could jeopardize Social Security checks"

Jed Lewison:

The thing to keep in mind here is that if we do reach the debt limit, it's not entirely clear what the legal obligations of the White House would be—in other words, whether they would actually be legally obligated to restrain spending. The issue is that reaching the debt limit involves the collision of contradictory legislation (the conflict between legislation that authorized spending and legislation limiting the debt limit). Plus, you also have constitutional questions about whether the debt ceiling is constitutional in the first place. So it's not entirely clear what the law requires, and the Obama administration should be reserving every legal option it has in order to avoid the damage that could be caused if Republicans fail to raise the debt limit. MORE...