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Back in the summer of 2011, the first time Republicans threatened not to raise the debt ceiling and forced a downgrade of the nation’s credit rating, many in the party minimized the possible consequences of their actions.

Surpassing the debt ceiling wouldn’t mean default, said Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, because the government could simply pay its more important bills, like Social Security, while evading its lesser obligations, like payroll. Extremist House members including Michele Bachmann, Tom Price, Joe Walsh, Steve King and Louie Gohmert all insisted that President Obama was making too much of the danger, because he could simply prioritize the country’s needs and close down whatever was not crucial.

“We are going to provide full faith and credit, so anybody holding our debt has nothing to worry about,” said Mr. Gohmert.



That was nonsense then, and it’s still nonsense as we enter into yet another debt-limit fight. Busting through the limit would indeed constitute default, since the government would be unable to pay its bills. Credit markets don’t care which bills are in arrears. By refusing to pay its basic obligations, Washington would undermine the trust that lenders require to buy government bonds.

It’s not even clear that the president has the constitutional authority to pick and choose which creditors to pay and which to stiff. But let’s say he does. If he were to pay off foreign creditors before Social Security recipients, Medicare doctors and air traffic controllers, he might stave off global chaos only to unleash domestic chaos.

Yet many Republicans still don’t seem to understand what’s at stake. Several are claiming that piercing the debt ceiling would simply result in another shutdown of the federal government, the kind the nation has experienced a few times before when the two parties couldn’t agree on annual spending bills. (And which it might experience again, debt ceiling aside, when the current stopgap spending agreement runs out on March 27.)

“It may be necessary to partially shut down the government in order to secure the long-term fiscal well-being of our country,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas wrote recently. The new senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, also referred to default as a “partial government shutdown.” Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said it would be no worse than closing down a few national parks or not cutting the grass on the Mall.

Though such talk might sound delusional, it actually has a purpose: it is designed to convince members of the public and the press that default is yet another routine standoff, so that all sides get blamed for simple stubbornness. But anyone who needs to pays attention— and that includes residents of every city that will lose aid, every corporate contractor that will not get paid, and every government bondholder — should know that default is very different and much worse, and only one political party is interested in making it happen.