I was shocked (er, sort of) to learn that each month the Treasury Department sends out 80 million checks to various recipients. That’s a little over 25% of the population. I guess it’s no surprise, however, when you consider only half the households in our country pay any income taxes.
Lately, President Obama has been beating the scare drum, suggesting those most vulnerable will not receive their monthly checks unless we increase the debt ceiling. But there’s a dirty little secret that no one in the mainstream media is willing to tell you: the Government, through Barack Obama, decides who gets paid and who doesn’t. And if you don’t get your check, then it means he decided you were not important. Blame him.
It’s all about priorities, and as the chief executive, Barack Obama takes the pot of money the Congress confiscates for him via taxes and divvies it up. He decides which of the 80 million checks get paid based upon the revenue he has at his disposal. There is money coming into the treasury all the time, and there will be money to pay some (but not necessary all) checks if/when we reach the debt ceiling.
Obama decides who does not get paid, and he decides who does get paid. When he threatens not to pay the elderly, the disabled, veterans, and even the military, he is saying that he has higher priorities than them. These may be things like Planned Parenthood, foreign aid to countries that may not even be friendly toward Barackistan, Michelle Obama’s personal staff of 40, State-run media (like NPR), and so on.
To not pay seniors their Social Security benefits, as Obama has suggested many times, takes a proactive effort to circumvent processes designed precisely to ensure seniors do get paid despite any potential default. Professor Michael McConnell of Stanford University explains the process:
The Social Security trust fund holds about $2.4 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds, which its trustees are legally entitled to redeem whenever Social Security is running a current account deficit. Thus, if we reach the debt ceiling this is what will happen. The Social Security trust fund will go to Treasury and cash in some of its securities, using the proceeds to send checks to recipients.
So you can see, in order to not pay seniors, the President must suspend this process and deny payments intentionally, even though he would have the money to pay them. That’s how dictators work, after all.
We’ve seen Obama on television many times lately. Try as he may to blame in advance the Republican Party for any stopped checks, it will be his decision that prevents these payments from going out. If you don’t receive your check following our maxing out the federal credit card: blame Barack Obama.
Follow Mike Angley on Twitter: @MikeAngley and on FaceBook: mike.angley.
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