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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (9993)	8/2/2011 9:24:34 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

Reneging on some contractual obligations counts and not others? No, most spending does not involve contractual obligations. The US government has no contractual obligation for any, or at least almost any, of its transfer payments. It has contractual obligations to vendors, but not to recipients of Social Security. even if we shut some Departments and leave them out of the calculation, we'd still be legally obliged to pay the rent. If you don't pay the rent, you're in default. The US government's rent payments, while very high compared to the rent payments of individuals or other organizations, are a very small part of its total spending. And I would guess some small portion of those rent agreements can probably be canceled without default or major cancellation penalty. A bigger possible problem would be wages and benefits for union employees, and retirees in general. I'm not sure about the details here, but if you can't simply push through mass layoffs or furloughs then it would cost a lot more than rent.