House Republicans are gearing up to grill Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell this week over how the administration will handle any potential fallout if the Supreme Court strikes down federal subsidies for health insurance coverage in 34 states operating on the federal exchange. Burwell will testify before the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday, ahead of the high court’s ruling in the high-stakes case of King v. Burwell, expected later this month. 

The plaintiffs in that case contend that the law’s language only provides for subsidies to people in states that created their own exchange. The Obama administration and authors of the law maintain that the law was intended to offer subsidies to all enrollees who are eligible based on their income regardless of which exchange they used. 

Related: If Obamacare Collapses, These 9 Ideas Could Save Health Care 

If the court rules against the administration, an estimated 6.5 million people could lose their subsidized health coverage. If that happens, experts say it could create a ripple effect throughout health insurance markets in federal exchange states. Nearly everyone agrees that such a ruling would be devastating for millions of Americans. However, there is little agreement over what, if anything, to do to stem such fallout if the court rules for the plaintiffs. 

Asked why his administration has given little guidance to states on how to prepare for the potential loss of federal insurance subsidies, President Obama on Monday said, “there is no reason why the existing exchanges should be overturned through a court case.” 

King v. Burwell “should be an easy case,” Obama said. “Frankly, it probably shouldn’t even have been taken up. And since we’re going to get a ruling pretty quick, I think it’s important for us to go ahead and assume that the Supreme Court is going to do what most legal scholars who’ve looked at this would expect them to do.” 

Obama added that Congress could also resolve any problems raised by a court ruling “with a one-sentence provision.” 

Related: Double Digit Rate Hikes Loom for Obamacare 2016  

That kind of response is unlikely to satisfy House Republicans, who are likely to again question Burwell’s previous claims that the administration does not have a “Plan B” in place if the court strikes down federal subsidies for millions of Americans. 

Last week, during a Wall Street Journal breakfast, Burwell explained that the administration’s authority is limited. She added that her agency would work with states that are considering creating their own exchanges or using workarounds to avoid losing out on the federal subsidies. 

“As always, we will stand ready to work with states, but in terms of administrative authority, we can’t do much,” Burwell said. 

Republicans, who have long sought to repeal Obamacare, have criticized the administration for not having a contingency plan in place if the subsidies get struck down. 

The average household had a credit card balance of $7,177 in the first quarter, the highest level in six years, according to a new report by CardHub.

Total consumer credit card debt in the U.S. amounted to more than $57 billion for the quarter, despite paying off $34.7 billion in the quarter.

There was some good news in the report: Credit card defaults for the quarter declined more than $350 million to the lowest rate since 1995, and first quarter debt reduction was 7 percent large than those of the past two years.

About a third of households with credit card debt carries a balance from month to month claims a separate study by the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.

Meanwhile, the number of credit card accounts is increasing. In the first quarter, TransUnion says there were 359.64 million credit card accounts, up 4 percent from the first quarter of 2014.

CardHub estimates that net credit card debt for the year will be $55.8 billion, roughly the same level as last year.

Consumers with high levels of credit card debt could benefit from taking advantage of some of credit card transfers, which are among the sweetest they’ve been in years, with many issuers offering zero-percent transfers for a year or more.

Look for a deal that includes no transfer fees or annual fees. Rolling over debt only makes sense if you can pay it off before or immediately after the introductory rate expires. 

Even some of the most diehard Apple fanatics missed one of the company’s biggest rollouts. About a year ago, Apple launched a new computer language, Swift, that is rapidly becoming one of the most popular software languages among programmers, according to Bloomberg.

In rankings of programming languages by developer industry analysts at a firm called RedMonk, Swift placed 22nd early this year, up from 68^th in the third quarter of last year.

Apple’s new language now finds itself just one spot behind Coffeescript and one spot ahead of Lua, which might not mean much to you but apparently has developers quite excited.

“The growth that Swift experienced is essentially unprecedented in the history of these rankings,” the RedMonk analysis explains.

Previously, Apple developers could only use Objective C, a language built in the 1980s. Responding to complaints that the language was old fashioned and slow, Apple unveiled Swift, which it had been working on since 2010. Developers have responded to Swift’s safety, modernity and "expressiveness," meaning fewer lines of code are required to get the computer to do specific things. 

The ride-hailing service Lyft reportedly rewrote its entire app about six months ago using Swift after finding that updates to the code took much less time. Another early user of the code is SlideShare, a document-sharing service owned by LinkedIn. 

Still, as Swift is still undergoing rapid evolution, most developers are choosing to wait before adopting it. As of now, Objective C is still Apple developer’s number one choice, but a fully developed Swift could swiftly change that.

One hurdle to first-time homebuyers is starting to get a little lower: The average down payment for a home fell to less than 15 percent in the first quarter of 2015 to its lowest level since early 2012. The average down payment for the quarter was $57,710, according to RealtyTrac.

The lower down payments reflect new loan programs recently introduced by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and lower insurance premiums for Federal Housing Authority Loans. The market is also adjusting as large, institutional investors who had been buying starter homes as rental investments dial back.

Related: U.S. Homeownership Dips, But Household Formation Rises

“Down payment trends in the first quarter indicate that first-time homebuyers are finally starting to come out of the woodwork, albeit gradually,” RealtyTrac vice president Daren Blomquist said in a statement.

Broken down by type of loan, the average down payment for conventional loans was 18.4 percent ($72,590), and the average down payment for FHA loans was just 2.9 percent ($7,609). FHA loans as a share of all mortgages increased from 21 percent in January to 25 percent in March.

Among the country’s largest counties, Wayne County in Detroit, Mich., had the lowest average down payment (12 percent), and New York had the highest (37 percent).

While lower down payments are good news for first-time homebuyers, they also are a reminder of practices that led to the housing bubble that began to burst in late 2006 and contributed to the financial crisis. During the height of the boom, buyers were able to purchase homes that they couldn’t really afford by putting little or no money down on the property.

Amid growing signs that the U.S. faces nothing but bad choices in its war against ISIS, Rep. Jim McGovern, a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts, today denounced Congress as “the poster child for cowardice” for refusing to debate a new war powers resolution to set parameters for the Obama administration’s efforts to “degrade and defeat” the jihadist terrorists in Iraq and Syria.

At the behest of Republican and Democratic leaders, Obama sent a proposed war powers resolution to Congress in February outlining his core objectives of systematically destroying the jihadist terror group through a sustained campaign of airstrikes, supporting and training allied forces on the ground and humanitarian assistance – but without committing a large number of U.S. combat troops to the effort.

Related: U.S. Shoots Itself in the Foot By Accidentally Arming ISIS 

The administration proposal would give the military “flexibility” to confront unforeseen circumstances, potentially by deploying Special Forces in the region. But it would limit the mission to three years and would not authorize “enduring offensive ground combat operations.” 

But rather than roll up their sleeves and debate and vote on the president’s request for new military authorization, Republican leaders have effectively shelved the issue and moved on to other things, such as rewriting the rules for NSA spying on Americans’ phone calls and providing Obama with fast track authority to negotiate a new trade pact with Asian countries.

With many conservative Republicans including Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina complaining that the president’s strategy for defeating ISIS woefully inadequate and some Democrats worried that it goes too far in committing U.S. troops and resources to a no-win situation in the Middle East, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Corker (R-TN) said recently he had no incentive to take up the issue in his committee.

Related: Why Congress Should Simply Bag the War Powers Debate

Frankly speaking, this is unacceptable,” McGovern, a member of the House Rules Committee,  said on the House floor today, adding that if the Congress “doesn’t have the stomach” to authorize the war it should vote to bring U.S. forces home, according to Politico. McGovern introduced a bipartisan resolution that would require full debate within 15 days on whether U.S. troops should withdraw from Iraq and Syria. His bipartisan resolution is co-sponsored by Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Barbara Lee (D-CA).

“This House appears to have no problem sending our uniformed men and women into harm’s way,” McGovern said in prepared remarks. “It appears to have no problem spending billions of dollars for the arms, equipment and airpower to carry out these wars. But it just can’t bring itself to step up to the plate and take responsibility for these wars.”