treasury securities first. the thinking there not making good on those commitments could trigger global financial turmoil as investors might start fleeing treasuries and treasuries serve as a building block for the financial system. paying social security benefits, 66 million americans get paid out monthly. also making medicare payments, more than 65 million people are enrolled in that. and the pay in benefits for some 2 million federal workers, 1.4 million active duty military members. and the list, it doesn t end there. now, the treasury secretary actually warns a plan like this, it still isn t a fix, it still means default. we believe i believe that prioritization of payments, as you said, is default by another name. it s simply a recipe for economic and financial catastrophe to think we can pay
in the same place. i ll be blunt with you, we get by this, i m taking a look at months down the red to see what the court would say, whether or not it does work. yes, sir. do you have time to get a deal and get it through before the deadline as early as january 1st, that secretary yellen has warned of? i know we have the time. we could do it easily. do we have the will. and there s other proposals like prioritization of payments and minting coin, can you speak to whether either of those have been studied by your staff? no, i can t, because i don t think anybody studied the minting of the coin issue, but there have been discussions about whether or not the 14th amendment can be invoked. reporter: is that the most likely unilateral executive path going forward? i don t think that solves our problem now. i think that only solves your problem if once the court has ruled that it does apply for future endeavors, yes, sir.
who unite the united states government to pay them on a regular basis. one of the things that republicans have mentioned, the disco, around but also back in 2011 when we went through this for the first time in a real serious way, it is, oh, don t worry, we can prioritize the payments. there is a bill out on the hill that would require treasury to prioritize payments if the debt limit isn t raised. is that realistic? prioritization is defaults by another name, jonathan. what it means is that you would pay some people, and not other people. that would be the first time in the history of the united states where we haven t done. that congress needs to do today is raise the debt limit, which they ve done 80 times since 1960, and three times in the last administration, without having to negotiate. if we don t do that, we had to put a place where not only financial markets could be, hurt but real lives of americans could be hurt. you outlined the data yourself earlier in the segment, but
vermont senator bernie sanders unveiling the new legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $17 over five years. larry kudlow with i think his quick reaction to that? nothing is going to happen. nothing, i mean to his credit, senator sanders have been saying it for years. look, only one major piece of legislation that is on the table right now and that is the debt ceiling and budget reform that speaker mccarthy is doing. that is it. and you ve got i think may 4th, did you say that s today, may 4th, so you ve got somewhere between 4 and 6 weeks to get that done. and if you don t get it done, two things. we will always pay off the debt, revenues do come in. but there will have to be very difficult strict prioritization of revenues throughout the
budget office, peter or zag, said in an interview that i did with him earlier today about another lane that could be taken here. watch this. the first test, clearly, is to cut a deal, and that should happen. but, we are getting close enough here, we need to start playing through the alternatives. i think relative to default, or prioritization, if we are in that position, i would invoke the 14th amendment, and ignore the debt limit. so, the 14th amendment basically says, ignore the debt limit, and democrats, the government, can keep on trucking. do you think that is a possibility here, jason? anything is possible. stephanie, this was part of the kabuki theater everybody is doing right now. everybody becomes a constitutional scholar, everybody has an economics degree, and economics ph.d. from harvard, everyone will toss out plans, but no one is invested in these alternatives. they just say them now, because part of the negotiation. they will end up cutting a deal. we can play this