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The government is just 10 days away from defaulting on its debt. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said that by Oct. 17, the department will likely have less money on hand than it needs to pay all its bills.

"The reality is that if we run out of cash to pay our bills, there is no option that permits us to pay all of our bills on time, which means that a failure of Congress to act would for the first time put us in a place where we're defaulting on our obligations as a government," Lew said on NBC's Meet The Press on Sunday.

House Republicans say there's a way to minimize the negative effects of a default. In May, the GOP-controlled House passed a bill that would have prioritized some of the payments the Treasury makes so the most important bills could get paid first.

The bill directed the U.S. Treasury to pay bondholders first if there wasn't enough money available to pay all the nation's debts. It didn't become law because it wasn't passed by the Senate.

House Speaker John Boehner defended the idea on Bloomberg TV. "I think doing a debt-prioritization bill makes it clear to our bondholders that we're going to meet our obligations," he said.

When asked if that means paying China before U.S. troops, Boehner said it's no different than "in any other court proceeding."

"The bondholders usually get paid first," he said. "Same thing here."

But Mark Patterson, the chief of staff at the U.S. Treasury from 2009 to last May, dismisses the idea.

"I think if you ask anybody who has been secretary of the Treasury of either party going back many years, they would tell you that is a god-awful idea," Patterson says.

Ultimately, says Patterson, making payments to bondholders but delaying checks for seniors on Social Security, for instance, still undermines confidence in the commitment by the United States to meet its obligations.

"If we go into an internal debt crisis, if you will, where we're not paying Social Security beneficiaries who've paid into the system over the years, many of whom live check to check, then we are going to appear as a country that is in a whole lot of trouble and the world is going to view us that way," Patterson says.

He says that Treasury departments in both Democratic and Republican administrations have concluded that paying all of the nation's bills "on time, in full" is what makes investors, whether they're individuals or other countries, willing to lend money to the U.S.

The Two-Way

No End In Sight: Shutdown Showdown Enters Week 2

Imagine a poker table.

At one seat, China's President Xi Jinping studies his cards. At another, Russian president Vladimir Putin is stroking his chin. Asian leaders fill the other seats, each trying to win the pot, which is filled — not with poker chips — but with jobs.

That's the kind of high-stakes game that played out this week in Indonesia, where global leaders got together to discuss trade relations. Their gathering ended Tuesday, and exactly who won what is not yet clear.

But this much is known: President Obama was not at the table.

And his absence, due to budget and debt tensions in Washington, was not good for American workers. Or at least that's the assessment of many economists.

'Important To Show Up'

They say the president needs to be in the game, but he missed his chances at the three-day Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

"It's always important to show up" whenever global leaders are talking trade, said Bill Adams, senior international economist for PNC Financial Services Group.

"Sweeping trade agreements are never settled at one meeting, but they are large and complex, so you need to keep working on them," he said. "You need face time with other leaders."

Many Asian leaders had hoped to end the APEC meeting with an announcement about advances in trade deals, in particular the Trans-Pacific Partnership with the United States. But those hopes fizzled, with some Asian officials saying they fear the TPP lost momentum because Obama was not there to push it.

Advancing a mega-trade deal is particularly important at this stage of the slow U.S. economic recovery, most economists contend. That's because growth spurts typically come from:

1) fiscal stimulus (Congress spending money for new roads and bridges)

2) monetary stimulus (the Federal Reserve making it easy and cheap to borrow) or

3) favorable trade deals (U.S. companies getting access to new markets).

A Key Economic Ingredient

Options No. 1 and 2 are off the table, given that Congress is in no mood to spend more money, and the Fed already has pushed interest rates to historic lows. So the only booster shot would have to come from U.S. exports.

That's why the Obama administration is trying to pull together the TPP. The president's primary goal is to get 11 other countries in the Asia-Pacific region to make it much easier for U.S. companies to sell services in Asia without having to set up a physical presence there.

So companies engaged in, say, digital media, online retailing and health sciences, are excited about getting a better shot at Asian customers without having to open expensive foreign offices. The White House first announced outlines of the agreement back in 2011 when the APEC summit was held in Obama's old hometown, Honolulu.

The Government Shutdown

Without Key Jobs Data, Markets And Economists Left Guessing

Senate Democrats might introduce a measure to raise the debt ceiling, even as the debate over a a spending bill to re-start the federal government drags on.

The Associated Press reports:

"A spokesman said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could unveil the measure as early as Tuesday, setting the table for a test vote later in the week. The measure is expected to provide enough borrowing room to last beyond next year's election, which means it likely will permit $1 trillion or more in new borrowing above the current $16.7 trillion debt ceiling that the administration says will be hit on Oct. 17."

The government is just 10 days away from defaulting on its debt. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said that by Oct. 17, the department will likely have less money on hand than it needs to pay all its bills.

"The reality is that if we run out of cash to pay our bills, there is no option that permits us to pay all of our bills on time, which means that a failure of Congress to act would for the first time put us in a place where we're defaulting on our obligations as a government," Lew said on NBC's Meet The Press on Sunday.

House Republicans say there's a way to minimize the negative effects of a default. In May, the GOP-controlled House passed a bill that would have prioritized some of the payments the Treasury makes so the most important bills could get paid first.

The bill directed the U.S. Treasury to pay bondholders first if there wasn't enough money available to pay all the nation's debts. It didn't become law because it wasn't passed by the Senate.

House Speaker John Boehner defended the idea on Bloomberg TV. "I think doing a debt-prioritization bill makes it clear to our bondholders that we're going to meet our obligations," he said.

When asked if that means paying China before U.S. troops, Boehner said it's no different than "in any other court proceeding."

"The bondholders usually get paid first," he said. "Same thing here."

But Mark Patterson, the chief of staff at the U.S. Treasury from 2009 to last May, dismisses the idea.

"I think if you ask anybody who has been secretary of the Treasury of either party going back many years, they would tell you that is a god-awful idea," Patterson says.

Ultimately, says Patterson, making payments to bondholders but delaying checks for seniors on Social Security, for instance, still undermines confidence in the commitment by the United States to meet its obligations.

"If we go into an internal debt crisis, if you will, where we're not paying Social Security beneficiaries who've paid into the system over the years, many of whom live check to check, then we are going to appear as a country that is in a whole lot of trouble and the world is going to view us that way," Patterson says.

He says that Treasury departments in both Democratic and Republican administrations have concluded that paying all of the nation's bills "on time, in full" is what makes investors, whether they're individuals or other countries, willing to lend money to the U.S.

The Two-Way

No End In Sight: Shutdown Showdown Enters Week 2