George Will made a statement Tuesday that I sincerely wish every American on both sides of the aisle would pay attention to - especially members of the media.
Appearing on Fox News’s Special Report, Will accurately said, “Default is a choice.”
GEORGE WILL: Last time we faced cataclysm over this was when, what, Standard and Poor’s it was lowered our credit rating. It was a disaster. No, the cost of borrowing actually went down 40 percent. I don't think the markets are as irrational as some of the people on Wall Street say. I repeat what I have said here before: default is a choice, a choice in the sense that we have 10 times more revenue coming in than is needed to service our debt. We can continue to service our debt by not paying certain other vendors and certain other programs.
We will only default if it is a choice, and, furthermore, the 14th amendment empowering the president not at all but the Congress entirely says it is a constitutional requirement to pay first, under the full faith and credit of the United States, our bonded debt.
BRET BAIER, HOST: So then why all of the, well, what has been said about these dates? The fact that they could miss payments and the fact that the world economy, the IMF, the head of the IMF is weighing in. Why are all these people weighing in the coming days, in the past few days about all of this?
WILL: To create a stampede in the direction they favor. But I still, the arithmetic is there. Juan, I mean, what do you do with 10 times the revenue?
JUAN WILLIAMS: If you got Social Security, if you’re a veteran receiving American benefits, I don't think people prioritizing and saying, “Oh, we’re going to take care of the borrowers first, we’re going to take care of China at first, but grandma, just wait a second. We’ll get to you.”
BAIER: Well, that's it. That's the politics. I mean, if the president decided that Social Security checks were going to be delayed, if the president made that decision.
WILLIAMS: No, but somebody has to make a decision. As George was saying, you can prioritize, you can make decisions about where money goes, but someone gets hurt. There’s going to have to be a moment where you say, “You know, I'm sorry this happened.”
WILL: But you can't call everybody's pain “default.”
Actually, if you’re Obama, a Democrat, or a member of the media you can.
