Grandma Yellen Let The Debt Ceiling Cat Out Of The Bag

Ooops! On a Sunday talk show Grandma Yellen uttered the words which may not be spoken by any Secretary of the Treasury. To wit, that a public debt payment default need not ever happen:

“We take the debt ceiling seriously as a constraint on our ability to pay bills that are coming due. And my assumption is that if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, there will be hard choices to make about what bills go unpaid,” Yellen said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”.

For once, an MSM pet monkey actually asked a follow-up question on “Meet the Press”. Thus, Chuck Todd queried of Yellen:

You’ll allow a default on some debt, if Congress doesn’t raise this debt ceiling?” 

And then, as if some anonymous national hero had slipped a truth pill in with Yellen’s morning meds, a sitting Secy of the Treasury blurted out:

“We have to pay interest and principle on outstanding debt. We also have obligations to seniors who count on Social Security, our military that expects pay, contractors who’ve provided services to the federal government, and some bills have to go unpaid,”

Whereupon for the second time within a minute Todd acted like a journalist rather than a PR flack for the Washington powers that be:

“Have you decided which (unpaid) bills those are going to be yet?” Todd asked.

That, of course, was Yellen’s cue to delete her verbal gaffe and insist that if everyone is not paid, then no one can be paid including holders of US government bills and notes. That correction would have put the monkey back on Speaker McCarthy’s back to raise the debt ceiling on Sleepy Joe’s terms.

Alas, the truth serum had apparently not yet worn off. Grandma Yellen went all “George Washington” on live public television, implicitly averring she could not tell a lie:

“Look, I would say we’re focused on raising the debt ceiling. And there will be hard choices if that doesn’t occur.

There you have it. Not paying any bill including debt service in the absence of a debt ceiling increase, as White House’s have long insisted must be done, is a “choice” in the singular; prioritizing which bills to pay from available receipts involves “choices” in the plural.