this just one thing. we need to think of a solution to pay our debt long term. sean: cut, cap and balance do it? absolutely. he s going to wring my neck. we are not going to default teen if we don t raise the debt cap. we have enough on hand to pay debt service that s all the markets care about. despite nonsense from moody s and s&p, treasury prices are going up. deals are going down. we have enough money to pay that we have enough money to pay medicare, maybe social security. do we have enough to keep government going forever the size? no. you have lost your mine. sean: will you get rid of your liberal side for a moment. you are a smart analyst. why would liberals oppose cut, cap and balance? because the balanced budget
sure that the tea party support candidates will have a place to lodge their votes and put it on record? tea party conservatives say they will not vote for any kind of a debt ceiling increase without those three things enacted. so they re giving them this vote almost as cover, that s exactly right, it s for the freshman, for the right wing of the republican house and congress, which is really where the vote is. this vote does give leadership a little bit of cover as they go forward to inevitably raising the debt cap. is speaker boehner being seen as the adult in the room, shall we say, when we re talking about the republicans? we would say yes, he says president obama has no plan. and that s the message that they have been pushing for a long time. but he knows that he s talked to the president and he knows what the president wants. he even tried to do a deal with
america is asking a lot of questions about the u.s. economy and what will happen if congress fails to reach an agreement on the debt ceiling. stephen moore is senior economic writer for the wall street journal. thanks for joining us. hi, patti ann. patti ann: hi. we ll start with that one. people want to know what is the true impact if we don t raise the debt cap and what is the list of bills that will and will not be paid? well i think the real impact, patti ann, if we don t get some real spending cuts because there are so many anxiety among americans and investors around the world about whether the united states can get serious about bringing spending down and bringing that enormous debt that james rosen was talking about down to more manageable levels. so i do think it is absolutely essential that any debt deal have a program where we bring that debt down in a sustained way, in a meaningful way over the next ten years. now, to your question about whether or not, what s going
i think the republicans painted themselves, ourselves in a corner here. i don t think it s a sensible, responsible corner to be in. yes, as charlie said, cut whatever can be reasonably cut but don t rule out the tax increase. we have fantastic growth in the country with higher taxes than now. we could have it again. please, please, please. don t get close to default. if they can t come up with an agreement, it s apocalyptic market collapse. you have people loaning money to the federal government this week at, and getting a yield of 2.9%. or thereabouts. you re paid bupkis. everybody thinks this is going to get taken care of. if it doesn t get takep care of. you re saying if they default. right? that is what you re saying? i can t imagine them defaulting. they don t have to default. they can temporarily extent the debt cap for 40 years. they don t have to default.
trillion dollars. that wouldn t close the annual budget deficit. neil: bottom line, i don t see them bridging the gap. i look at that early august, that ceiling. then what happens? then what happens? neil: charles, what happens? well, i think there will be some sort of a compromise that will not include a tax hike. i think the line has been drawn in the sand. though you had something of a battle between old guard republicans and the young turks, i believe that. you want to talk about look at how weak the economy is. and how slowly it s growing. that is with a 2% payroll tax cut this year. that s what we got. try to raise taxes in this economy, look out below. this notion that we are going to go in default. just my own similar approximately country reporter logic seems absurd. temporarily, increase the debt cap. as they sit in a room and negotiate. you don t have to go into default. neil: what if they don t