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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (614303)	6/6/2011 10:30:36 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1579134

It changes it in a large and very obvious way. "The US government has no contractual obligations" Means that there is no contractual obligation, whatsoever, that the US government has. Its not obligated to pay principal or interest on debt, its not obligated to pay its employees, its not obligated to pay for performance of defense contracts, or building or maintaining interstate highways, etc. The statement I actually made - "The US government has no contractual obligations, and no legal debt owed under the entitlement programs" Means that the entitlement payments are not debt or a contractual obligation. I could have phrased it a little better because it makes it seem like these programs have no such obligations where they are obligated to pay employees, and vendors, but the main expense, the payments to recipients, are not a contractual obligation. If congress passed a law setting Social Security payments to zero, and requiring a $30,000 annual deductible before it paid out anything on Medicare, both starting January 1st 2020, then when that day roles around, and the payments for many people go to zero, it would not have defaulted, it would not have broken a contract, and its credit rating would almost certainly not be harmed (in fact with the lower spending, its credit should be strengthened). Passing such a law would be politically impossible, might be considered by many to be unfair, unreasonable, or otherwise negative, etc. But that isn't the same as reneging on contractual obligations or defaulting on a loan. It would be perceived by some, perhaps many, as reneging on such obligations, but they would be wrong, both as a matter of judicial precedent, and by the fact that there is no actual contract here. Saying that the entitlement programs are not a contractual obligation, doesn't even vaguely resemble saying that the US government has no contractual obligations. Your out of context quote is similar to quoting me as saying "The US has the most population of any country in the world", if I had actually said "Other than China and India, the US has the most population of any country in the world". You quoted words I said, but not in such a way as to get the meaning of what I said. You quoted a statement about part of something, as if it was a statement about the whole.