a debate going down just like today over raising the debt ceiling and one senator from oregon bob packwood had a question so we wrote a letter to the government accountability office basically asking how and in what order our debt obligations would be paid off if congress failed to raise the debt ceiling and what he received back in response is incredible here's the letter to the honorable bob packwood chairman son of your committee on finance and sits on it you have requested our views on whether the secretary of the treasury has authority to determine the order in which obligations are to be paid should the congress fail to raise the statutory limit on the public debt or whether treasury would be forced to operate on a first in first out basis and here's the key part of this letter it is our conclusion that the secretary of the treasury does have the authority to choose the order in which to pay obligations of the united states. now translating that into english what that means is that treasury secretary timothy geithner has the sole authority to determine how our debt obligations are me

the same debate going he was the man to i mean if you're ever busy before he got in trouble yeah bob packwood was the main and he was in that position where he was. find it's like him or not he was the guy they basically deferred to on an awful lot of financial issues and so he goes to the g.a.o. and says you know if if we don't raise the debt ceiling can the government do some can and they choose to pay the treasuries so we don't default and just not pay whoever we decide not to pay like for example well i would say. now how about not paying any federal highway funds education funds etc to any states whose entire congressional delegation has voted not to raise the debt ceiling which is probably ten fifteen states question western states to be honest and oklahoma while mean let's you get you get this one you're going to understand what we're talking about here if the congress fails to act and they essentially defer to the executive branch to act unfortunately they've done that on issues like war and peace they have not declared wars and they have a lot of barack obama to do if he chooses them

there is a fellow named bob packwood, a former united states senator. in my opinion, nothing personal come is very bad for history. he was a senator for about 25 years. about 20 years ago, he was accused of harassment from some staffers and some love yours and so forth. somewhere turned out that somebody disclosed for 25 years every single day, senator packwood took very copious notes. he kept a daily diary and not only wrote down his legislative issues, but also found himself compelled to record things that would eat that day, while closer and also every pass at another well then. when this came out, the senate subpoenaed his diaries and ended up having to resign from office and so forth. so when i got to washington assist total history junkie that who always felt more like a frustrated historian and politician, i thought it was important for whatever time is there to keep a careful diary. during president clinton's impeachment that on one day before the monica lewinsky story was revealed and i knew nobody was keeping -- that somebody didn't keep a car