Senator Vitter Sees No Default Happening

US Senator David Vitter joined 'Mornings With Ken and Bernie' today to discuss the looming budget shortfall, Obamacare and exemptions granted to Congress and others in government.

Noting that members of Congress had a looming deadline we asked Senator Vitter if he was getting any sleep due to the workload.  Vitter replied,

I'm getting too much sleep in the sense that we're waiting around for all these negotiations to go on with not enough action.  The action I was hoping for last night was for the House take a package which included my 'No Washington Exemption From Obamacare' language.  I think that would have been a very positive and powerful package to send over to the Senate but unfortunately they got bogged down and they didn't do that last night.

Some people including former President Bill Clinton have said Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land and can't be changed.  We asked Senator Vitter is that statement was true in light of slavery and prohibition being repealed.  Senator Vitter said,

This provision I'm talking about is the 'law of the land' that says members of Congress and staff go to the exchanges with no special exceptions or no special subsidies and yet they've changed that out of thin air by Administrative fiat, completely illegally in my opinion.

With the ongoing debate in Congress about the debt ceiling and the possibility of America defaulting we asked Senator Vitter if default was eminent and he replied,

No I don't think there is any threat of default.  Now we could beyond the debt limit and that would have some significant consequences.  But it would not involve default.  Default means you don't pay or you're late on payments on interest on the debt on government securities.  I don't think there's any significant threat of that for the simple reason because we have a whole lot more income coming in than it takes to cover that.

You can listen to the entire interview to hear all of the discussion: