Lew: Government spending cannot be turned off

As reported by McClatchy:

Testifying before the Senate Finance Committee during an unusual 8 a.m. hearing, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew all but ruled out the chances that the Obama administration would try to prioritize who gets paid in the event that next week's debt ceiling deadline passes. ... Asked about prioritizing payments due so that bondholders get paid, and so do Social Security recipients, military families and so on, Lew suggested it couldn't be done. "This system was not designed to be turned off selectively," he said.

This system is not designed to be turned off selectively??? What the hell does that mean? Can we never stop the outflow of money from the federal government if we choose to?

Once again it needs to be pointed out that families and businesses "selectively" stop spending money if they don't have it. The assertion that the federal government cannot stop spending is simply preposterous on its face. If the federal government's payment systems are so inflexible, then they have been designed about as effectively as the Obamacare exchanges.

McClatchy goes on:

Lew repeatedly warned that it's not just a matter of paying interest to bondholders to prevent a default on U.S. government bonds, but rather the hundreds of millions of dollars of bonds that roll over in coming weeks. These bonds are used as collateral in all sorts of financial transactions and if financial markets decide they won't trade then until the government is funded it could cause financial markets to seize up.

This is "Chicken Little" fear mongering of the worst kind. The idea that the market in U.S. government bonds, the deepest, most liquid market in the world, will freeze up is also completely preposterous.