Roundup: Lawmakers shift focus to debt ceiling

The Pew Research Center has one with “5 facts about the national debt: What you should know.

Obama and others say failure to raise the debt ceiling would lead to a default of the U.S. government’s “obligations.” Some Republicans, including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., counter that the government has ways to avoid a default on payments to bondholders even if the debt ceiling isn’t raised. Who’s right? FactCheck.org says it depends on how you define “default,” but adds that many economists “warn Paul’s narrow definition underplays how the marketplace would react to any default of payments, whether to bondholders or others.”

Stan Veuger, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank, says even if the Treasury Department prioritized payments to bondholders and defaulted on payments to businesses and individuals, there would be “serious economic consequences,” including a loss in consumer confidence and an increase in uncertainty.

Americans just beginning their careers have the most to lose if the debt ceiling is not raised, says the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank. There could be harmful effects on job creation, student loans, housing and investments in the infrastructure needed for economic growth.

If the United States were to default on its debt, that would “create situation analogous in the past only to the nullification crisis of 1832 and the secession crisis of 1860-1,” says Princeton history professor  Sean Wilentz in an opinion piece at Politico.com. “The emergency is that grave.”