programs, salary and benefit for federal employees, department of education, food services for low income women, infants and children, the department of labor, the department of justice, the department of energy, health and human services grants, the federal highway administration, the epa, irs refunds, the small business administration, the federal transit administration and housing assistance for the poor. i m sorry. really. if we don t raise the debt ceiling, there is no money to pay for any of that stuff. these are the choices the treasury department could be facing over the next few weeks if there s no deal on the debt ceiling. obama administration officials will reportedly brief the public after the markets close tomorrow about how they ll prioritize all of these payments. now when people talk about not raising the debt ceiling as economic armageddon, that list, that exhausting list, that
around trying to ask this question. is there anyone who is safe from this? you know, as exhausting as that list was that i just read, maybe if you re a viewer at home right now you re thinking, i don t use the department of justice very often, so no big deal for me. but what you ve just said suggests that this is not just about who won t get those immediate checks, but the big picture. exactly right. if you look as i do if you look at the median real wage right now, that is the actual paycheck of the typical working person, right, it s already falling in real terms, a percent or two per year, and that s just based on very high unemployment and some receipt inflationary issues we ve been facing. so people are obviously already struggling with what feels very much like an ongoing recession. what this does is it makes that deeper times about four. and the reason i say four, and i m not just pulling that out of the air, the reason i say four is basically this is a negative
people. i m not aware of any mechanism by which they could do that. now, there are certain programs, and you mentioned food and nutrition programs or pell grants for that matter. those go to disproportionately low income people. they could put those on the list. but you want to take medicare off the list? health care security depends on that for our retirees. can i make another point here, melissa, related to this? absolutely. think about this. if you follow the path that you re talking about, the priorization path, you re going to be interacting $130 billion with a b dollars from this economy per month. i mean, that is the biggest negative tank the economy program i could ever conceive of. and what you re going to do to an economy that s already frail, as we know, based on recent employment reports, is absolutely double dip territory. so this has this goes way beyond those who are directly affected in the very harmful ways we mentioned so far. i truly appreciate you making tha
around trying to ask this question. is there anyone who is safe from this? you know, as exhausting as that list was that i just read, maybe if you re a viewer at home right now you re thinking, i don t use the department of justice very often, so no big deal for me. but what you ve just said suggests that this is not just about who won t get those immediate checks, but the big picture. exactly right. if you look as i do if you look at the median real wage right now, that is the actual paycheck of the typical working person, right, it s already falling in real terms, a percent or two per year, and that s just based on very high unemployment and some receipt inflationary issues we ve been facing. so people are obviously already struggling with what feels very much like an ongoing recession. what this does is it makes that deeper times about four. and the reason i say four, and i m not just pulling that out of
you know, as exhausting as that list was that i just read, maybe if you re a viewer at home right now you re thinking, i don t use the department of justice very often, so no big deal for me. but what you ve just said suggests that this is not just about who won t get those immediate checks, but the big picture. exactly right. if you look as i do if you look at the median real wage right now, that is the actual paycheck of the typical working person, right, it s already falling in real terms, a percent or two per year, and that s just based on very high unemployment and some receipt inflationary issues we ve been facing. so people are obviously already struggling with what feels very much like an ongoing recession. what this does is it makes that deeper times about four. and the reason i say four, and i m not just pulling that out of the air, the reason i say four