{"id":4110,"date":"2005-05-02T14:45:19","date_gmt":"2005-05-02T18:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4110.html"},"modified":"2005-05-02T14:45:19","modified_gmt":"2005-05-02T18:45:19","slug":"its-only-the-validity-of-the-public-debt-of-the-united-states-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/its-only-the-validity-of-the-public-debt-of-the-united-states-government\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s only the validity of the public debt of the United States government"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s White House press briefing<\/a> included a lengthy exchange on whether the president believes in supporting the Treasury’s obligations. It didn’t go well.<\/p>\n

A reporter asked Scott McClellan about the president’s belief that the current Social Security system “leaves behind file cabinets full of IOUs.” The journalist asked if the president is suggesting that there’s a possibly that the government would default on the sovereign debt of the United States. It was a simple question — the right answer was “no” — but McClellan refused to cooperate.<\/p>\n

“I think that the President, if you’ll recall, went to West Virginia and stood in front of the file cabinet to point out to people what the trust fund really is. I mean, most people when they think of a trust fund, I think you would agree, believe that money is being set aside in account, and that it’s their money and that they’re going to receive that money back. Well, that’s not the case. In terms of the so-called Social Security trust fund, it is a file cabinet of paper IOUs. And that’s what it is.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, the press corps tried again, noting the inherent guarantee behind Treasury notes that the government will repay its debts. Right, Scott?<\/p>\n

“What is happening now under the current Social Security system, as the President has talked about, is a pay-as-you-go system. Money is being paid in to support today’s retirees. So that money is not being set aside, it’s being spent by the government. And the President, one thing he has talked about, is the importance of personal accounts…. Personal accounts will be something that is your money, it’s being set aside, it’s real savings. It’s not phantom savings.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again the reporters followed up, saying that there seems to be an indication that the U.S. would default on its debts, to which McClellan responded:<\/p>\n

“It’s the difference between real savings and phantom savings. It’s what I just explained. Would you agree that a trust fund is where you set aside someone’s money, and it’s their money, and that they get it back?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Three times reporters gave the White House’s top spokesperson a chance to defend the validity of the public debt<\/a> of the United States government. Three times, the spokesperson demurred.<\/p>\n

If foreign investors watched the press briefing, I wonder what they’d say about McClellan’s responses?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s White House press briefing included a lengthy exchange on whether the president believes in supporting the Treasury’s obligations. It didn’t go well. A reporter asked Scott McClellan about the president’s belief that the current Social Security system “leaves behind file cabinets full of IOUs.” The journalist asked if the president is suggesting that there’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}