What a government shutdown would do to Social Security payments

Relax. Your monthly Social Security checks are not in danger because of the looming federal government shutdown.

That will be reassuring news to those retirees who, like many of the rest of us, have difficulty understanding the different impacts of, on the one hand, the U.S. government coming up against its debt limit, and on the other hand a government shutdown prompted by the failure to pass an annual budget.

The former crisis was threatened earlier this year, you may recall, and only averted at the last minute. Hitting the debt limit could have led to a delay in Social Security payments, as I wrote at the time.

A government shutdown, in contrast, the prospect of which we’re facing now, would not have the same impact, for two main reasons.