Last night, Politico reported that Republicans entered today’s debt limit negotiations with the White House without any back up plan should the talks fail. “We’re putting stock in the president realizing he has to come up with a solution,” Chief Deputy Whip Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), told Politico, “We’re waiting.” That isn’t good enough.

This morning Reuters confirmed that the Obama administration is not just “waiting” to see how the debt talks pan out. “A small team of Treasury officials is discussing options to stave off default if Congress fails to raise the country’s borrowing limit by an August 2 deadline,” Reuters reports. Among those options: “The contingency discussions … are being led by Mary Miller, Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets, who is effectively custodian of the country’s public debt. Miller’s team has debated whether Obama could ignore Congress and order continued borrowing — by relying on the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution — if it fails to raise the borrowing cap.”