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To engage. until the president engages seriously, nothing moves forward. i m glad that the four are meeting. i think it s important that they re meeting. but i think the engagement needs to take place on next year s spending bills and appropriation bills and revenue bills, not on holding hostage the full faith and credit of the united states. so yes, the president is engaged. but senator cardin, you say he s engaged. the fact is that they met in february, house speaker mccarthy, president biden. they haven t met since then. where has the president been? in other words, even if you want to say we re going to separate spending from the debt, we re not going to make one contingent on the other, why not engage on the issues of spending and the economy and then pass a clean debt limit? we re already paying a cost for getting this close. it s already affecting our reputation. this should not be an issue. see, i think you re avoiding the point. if the president were showing leadership ....
This story was headed. good evening and welcome back to who s talking. it s called the x day, the day when the u.s. government defaults on its debt. it s never happened, but that s what we re facing if republicans and democrats don t agree on a deal to raise the nation s debt ceiling by the end of the month. next week, president biden meets with top congressional leaders from both parties. but will they agree to compromise? tonight, we sit down with two senators to explore if we re headed for an economic cliff. maryland democrat ben cardin and louisiana republican bill cassidy. senator cardin, how bad will it be if the u.s. defaults on its debt for the first time in history? in the real world, what will it mean for people who rely on government services and government checks? chris, first, it s good to be with you. it will be a disaster. you can see the specific impacts on our veterans on our seniors, ....
Our debt. it would be nice if that was off before we start borrowing more money, that we re not jeopardizes that. all right, let s move on. number two, what i like about senator cassidy s proposal, we need to maintain at least maintain the benefits of the social security system. we talk about middle income families and retirees. they depend upon their social security checks. we want to make sure they re going to continue think of the idea of taking money and putting it i understand this is new money, but putting it into the stock market? which can go right. which people suggest that this is the foot in the door to privatization. right. we have to protect the guaranteed benefits under social security. and we so that s my number one priority. i m willing to listen to any proposal that protects the guaranteed benefits under social security. and under our proposal, we guarantee those benefits. finally, senator cardin, you have just announced that you are going to ....
Now, the idea that, oh my gosh, we ve never seen this before in washington, just defies history. i love the fact that we re agreeing on all this. let me ask you, before we move on to some of specifics, as we sit here today, what are the chances give me a number that we are going to not pass the debt limit by june 1st or june 10th, whatever it is, and we re going to go into default? i would hope that, for the sake of our economy, for the sake of our economic future and america s reputation, we will not go off the cliff. we re too close to the cliff right now. tell me what president joe biden s going to do. is he going to be passive? in which case, call it 80%. is he going to engage like previous presidents have engaged? then i would say 5%. the real variable here is, do we have presidential leadership? or do we have presidential passivity? senator cardin, let s look at the plan that the republicans, house republicans, passed last week. ....
the difference, in this it would be held in escrow. in here, it would be invested. it actually balances. the money offsets it. if you had, to you could take and it put it back out. so it actually offsets. you re not buying tanks and you re not paying for unemployment benefits. over 30 years, over 70 years, that money grows. and we can bridge social security into solvency. senator cardin, i guess two questions. one, what do you think of $1.5 trillion? which as lot of money. secondly, which would be very different from what social security has done with its trust fund up to now, putting it in the stock market? our trust fund, we don t go into social security trust fund. no, as compared to what we have done with the current social security trust fund. you re taking the money and putting it in the market, which we know is up and down. first of all, like senator candy, working with democrats and republicans, trying to get things done, that s critically important, how we get things ....