The administration has resisted offering any guidance on how the Treasury Department would respond should the talks fail. David Plouffe, Obama’s chief political adviser at the White House, dismissed as “inconceivable” the idea that the government would choose between paying investors and soldiers. “The notion that we would just pay Wall Street bondholders and the Chinese government and not meet our Social Security and veterans’ obligations is insanity, and is not going to happen,” Plouffe said at a Bloomberg Breakfast yesterday.