Leaving the rhetoric at the door...

Poor Richard's News - Treasury: June tax revenue more than 3x LARGER than Social Security payments

Obama is flat out lying when he says that he’s unsure if Social Security checks will be able to go out on August 3rd. As Marco Rubio said yesterday, the fact that Treasury Secretary Geithner chose that date in the first place was a political calculation. Obama is using scare tactics to frighten weak kneed Republicans like Mitch McConnell into raising the debt ceiling or giving him the power to raise the debt ceiling himself.

Politicians, by definition, play politics. Both sides do it (and Republicans get blamed by the media) and always will. But there's a difference between playing politics to deal with a serious problem (Boehner, McConnell and the Republicans), and playing politics to get your own way (Obama).