From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Thursday, May 25th.

So here we are on the precipice of a U.S. government default on paying its bills and providing

its services, which the

experts say would likely come in early June if the President and the Republican House of

Representatives can't agree on terms for raising the debt ceiling, right? Most of the coverage right

now is focusing on the negotiating positions of President Biden and Speaker of the House,

Kevin McCarthy. We'll start today a little

differently, looking mostly in some detail at what default might actually entail. Who gets hurt,

how, and how quickly. We will get into the negotiations too, which are at a very interesting point

right now, with both sides reportedly ready for

some compromises, but also some new Republican demands. My guess for this is Jeff Stein,

White House economics reporter for the Washington Post. Since joining the Post in November

2017, he has covered the Republican tax law, the government shutdown, and the administration's

economic response to the coronavirus, among other topics. He has an article ominously titled

Seven Doomsday Scenarios of the U.S. crashes through the debt ceiling. Jeff, thanks for coming

on. Welcome to WNYC.

My pleasure as a New Yorker at heart, so thanks so much for having me on.

First, this June 1st date we've all been keying on, it's more accurately as early as June 1st, I think,

and different experts are predicting different dates for actual default,

but are they all landing on sometime in the first half of June?

Yeah, so tax revenue and tax payments are notoriously volatile. It's very hard to predict

precisely how much will go out or come into the U.S. Treasury every day or every week.

...