Tres Pinos, CA : Social Security Becoming A Hot Potato in Washington D.C. : View From A Private Duty Caregiver Serving, Aromas, Carmel, Carmel Valley, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Gonzalez, Gilroy, Greenfield, Hollister, King City, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Pebble Beach, Salinas, San Juan Bautista, Seaside, Soledad & Tres Pinos California

A new generation of Republicans are throwing the budget talks into chaos. Freshmen in both chambers have held up a compromise deal between Republican and Democratic leaders to raise the debt ceiling while at the same time reduce the national deficit. It's upended what President Obama said on Friday had been a "difficult but routine process" in the past. "The people who got elected in 2010 are going to go down fighting. They are not going to be persuaded by traditional politics. They could care less about 2012. They want to do what they can on their watch," Senator Lindsay Graham (Republican, South Carolina) told The New York Times. Many of them have pledged not to vote for an increase in the debt limit regardless of what deficit reduction deal is negotiated. Some of them have said they don't believe the Secretary of the Treasury, who has said that we will go into default on the national debt on August 2. "I don't believe, if we fail to raise the debt ceiling, we will default," Representative Jeff Landry, a freshman Republican from Louisiana, told The Times. The theory here is that there is enough revenue coming in to pay principal and interest, and we could stop paying other bills. That would be akin to paying your mortgage but only paying half of your credit card bills and hoping no one would notice. Not surprisingly, Moody's S&P already said this strategy won't work. They will downgrade the nation's credit rating if the debt limit isn't raised. Some are now trying to amend the U.S. Constitution to require a balanced budget, which would only further delay things. "Republicans have turned the necessity of raising the debt ceiling to pay our bills into political leverage," Representative Peter Welch (Democrat, Vermont). "A willful majority can hold hostage the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government. It's too bad that politicians remain so divided, and that some would even consider ruining our national credit rating by not paying our bills, some of which may be Social Security and Medicare payments.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/us/politics/17debt.html]
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