Learn me on this: There's no money for social programs but they're going to mint a $1 trillion coin?

[frazzled]

1. The coin is so they can PAY for all the social programs

Okay, let me try. The Republicans don't want to raise the debt ceiling. That is, they don't want to let the government borrow the money to pay the bills they've already incurred (incurred because Congress earlier approved the spending). If the debt ceiling limit is not raised, then the government can't pay for either the interest it owes to its creditors or all the other things it pays out, such as Social Security, Medicare, Defense contracts, etc.

If the debt ceiling is not raised, the government will have to stop paying for EVERYTHING that usually automatically goes out. It could stop paying on its debts, but that would make everything even worse, because then no one would ever lend us money, and our entire economy would go into a shambles, and we wouldn't have any money to pay for all these things we do on a regular basis. In other words, it's a giant clusterfuck, Catch-22 mess.

The coin idea (which is not going to happen) is a way for the administration to say, okay, we'll just mint a trillion dollar coin that will sit at the Fed and that will be the money we borrow to pay for everything. Apparently, it could actually work. But it's never going to happen.