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The Treasury Department is issuing a warning of dire economic consequences that could rival the Great Recession if Congress is unable to agree on raising the debt ceiling and the nation defaults on its obligations.

Treasury's report, "The Potential Macroeconomic Effect of Debt Ceiling Brinkmanship," comes as Congress is still wrangling over a short-term spending bill to reverse a partial government shutdown that went into effect Tuesday. Later this month, House Republicans and Senate Democrats will need to agree to raise the $16.7 trillion debt ceiling or face a possible default.

"[A] default would be unprecedented and has the potential to be catastrophic: credit markets could freeze, the value of the dollar could plummet, and U.S. interest rates could skyrocket, potentially resulting in a financial crisis and recession that could echo the events of 2008 or worse," Treasury said in a statement.

The department said "political brinksmanship that hints at even the prospect of a default can be disruptive," (emphasis in report) citing the 2011 debt ceiling impasse, when consumer and business confidence fell sharply, job growth slowed and financial markets were stressed.

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew warned that "Postponing a debt ceiling increase to the very last minute is exactly what our economy does not need — a self-inflicted wound harming families and businesses."

THE POTENTIAL MACROECONOMIC EFFECT OF DEBT CEILING BRINKMANSHIP

For many people, Michael Tanner says, it pays not to work. People on welfare — that's everything from food stamps to Medicaid to heating assistance — can make more in 35 states than they would make if they had a minimum wage job, according to Tanner. Even for someone who wants to work, he says, "welfare can actually be a rational alternative to work for many people." Choosing welfare may be a sound economic decision, Tanner argues in a recent report published by the libertarian Cato Institute, where Tanner is a senior fellow.

"If someone came to me and said, 'I'll pay you everything you're making today but you don't have to work any more,' I'm going to think about that," Tanner says. In Rhode Island, according to Tanner's report, a mother with two children can receive aid — cash assistance, Medicaid, housing, etc. — worth almost $39,000 a year, more than a starting teacher or secretary, according to Tanner.

I asked Brandy Alvarez, a single mother with two kids who lives in North Providence, Rhode Island, what she thought of Tanner's analysis. "I'm wondering where the rest of my money is," she said, laughing. She said she didn't receive housing assistance or several of the other benefits included in that $39,000 figure. In Rhode Island, only one in four welfare families receives housing assistance. People wait years for public or subsidized housing.

And if you do get a job, benefits don't all disappear. When Alvarez was offered a $12 an hour job with a nonprofit, she knew she'd lose her monthly welfare check and her food stamps would be reduced. But she got to keep Medicaid. She says, in the end, it was worth taking the job, even though she's just breaking even.

There is also, of course, the question of whether you can get a job at all. Tonilyn Rowe is a 25-year-old single mom who left her job at Dunkin Donuts when her son Marcus was born. Unemployment in Woonsocket, her Rhode Island town, is over 11 percent. Many stores are shuttered. Wal-Mart recently left town.

"Every day, I go out, and push my son around and fill out applications," she said. "But obviously it's not a good look to walk into a job with a stroller."

To Tanner's point, Rowe does worry that she'd lose some of her benefits if she took a job. But she also thinks certain benefits that she doesn't get — job training and child care — would help her and others like her support themselves in the long run. To some extent, Tanner agrees.

"I think what we want to do is have transition assistance," he says. "But we also want to make sure that the level of benefits is not sufficient to be a disincentive."

In Syria, a team of international weapons experts has begun the process of destroying the country's chemical weapons arsenal.

"The inspectors used sledgehammers and explosives to begin the work," NPR's Deborah Amos reports for our Newscast unit. "They are on a tight deadline to destroy more than 1,000 tons of nerve gas and banned weapons within a year."

Personnel from the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons make up the team. On Friday, a U.N. spokesperson said the team hoped to begin onsite inspections and destruction of production facilities in the coming week.

The inspectors' progress comes as Syrian President Bashar Assad maintains his government did not use chemical weapons on its citizens. In recent weeks, a U.N. report found that the poison gas sarin was used in an attack that killed hundreds of civilians — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the incident a "war crime."

In an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel, Assad admitted that he has made mistakes. And he said he would like for Germany to help mediate an end to Syria's civil war, which has lingered for more than two years. Amos reports:

"Stepping up interviews to Western news outlets, Assad told Der Spiegel magazine he wants negotiations, but [he] limited the partners. Not with rebels unless they put down their weapons, he said. Assad again denied his military had used chemical weapons, despite his pledge to allow a U.N. team to dismantle his arsenal."

Iran has arrested four people who it says were intent on sabotaging facilities in its nuclear program. The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran says the four are now being questioned.

"Some time ago, a number of people were arrested in one of the (nuclear) facilities when they were involved in planning activities," Ali Akbar Salehi said Sunday, according to Iran's state-run Tasnim News Agency.

Before their arrest, the suspects' activities had been monitored, Salehi said. He added that their interrogation is now under way.

"We let them do their activity to some extent, so that they would be arrested at the right time," he said, according to Tasnim.

He added that Iranian authorities had also identified "a number of other sabotage plots."

As for who Iran might hold responsible for the alleged plot, the AP reports that Salehi told the semiofficial Fars news agency, "Hostile countries are not interested in finding way out of current situation and they are trying to block agreement on the nuclear case though acts of sabotage."

Decoding the possible meaning of that statement, the AP says, "In Iranian official terminology, hostile countries are usually a reference to Israel and the United States. But the attempts at historic diplomacy... with Washington suggested the term was aimed at Israel."

Salehi also said that Iran has taken steps to protect itself from cyber attacks such as the Stuxnet virus, which struck the country's uranium enrichment facilities in 2010.

"We have carried out the necessary measures in this field, and since the outbreak of the Stuxnet virus, the Atomic Energy Organization has embarked on countering such malwares," he said, according to Tasnim. "To this end computer protection systems were upgraded, and we also separated the systems that were connected to the Internet."