Posted on 07/14/2011 10:41:22 AM PDT by IndePundit
The United States cannot constitutionally default on its existing public debt even if the debt ceiling is not raised, constitutional scholar and attorney David Rivkin said during a Federalist Society news event. Instead, he said, the country should focus on the fiscal responsibility of new borrowing.
“The United States, to put it more clearly, is one of the few countries in the world that is technically incapable of defaulting on its public debts, so we cannot have a situation like in Greece or Portugal or Ireland, ” Rivkin, co-chairman of the Center for Law and Counterterrorism, said during a telephone conference call sponsored by the conservative legal group on July 7.
Section Four of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States says that “[t]he validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
(Excerpt) Read more at cnsnews.com ...
Constitutional scholars are like attorneys.
Every one of them is always right and every one of them disagrees with every other one.
I’m no expert, but the passive voice makes me wonder: who is prohibited from questioning the debt?
Lol! Ok fine, lets just print 14 Trillion dollars and pay it off in one go. The debt would be paid and the constitional requirement would be satisfied. (of course the people that got paid would discover that their dollars were worth more as toilet paper than as currency)
None of Obama’s debt was “authorized by law” as there has not been a budget to authorize the spending.
Congress has passed Continuing Resolutions that authorize the disbursements from the public treasury. Congress has passed a conflicting debt ceiling. One or the other has to give, somewhere.
Pointed out just above, Congress also has the power to create money , so it can, under the constitution, create script that pays off the debt.
It is unconstitutional for the US government to repudiate debt that has been validly authorized.
Default is another matter. In the case of default, the government is not claiming creditors do not have the right to be paid, or that the debt is not valid. It is valid, they do have the right to be paid. It's just that the government has empty pockets. Creditors can go to court and get a valid judgment on defaulted debt. If they're lucky, maybe they can foreclose on the Grand Canyon.
so true!
great point - why doesn’t the government sell some of its vast assets to make ends meet.
oil rights in Alaska, real estate, admission rights to national monuments, space shuttles-—there are tons of assets.
At public auction as the auctioneer begins. OK, what’d have for the Grand Canyon Canyon? Do I hear a $1 million, do I have $2 million? Come on folks, it’s worth more than that. OK we’ll throw in the Statue of Liberty, as well. OK that’s more like it $5 million going once, twice...
Constitutional restrictions have been ignored since aug 2008
it started with article 2 section 1.
if they can’t uphold such a simple restriction, the odds of them adhering to the bigger restrictions is zer0
“If they’re lucky, maybe they can foreclose on the Grand Canyon.”
Actually, given the massive amounts of federal land out West, I wonder whether it would be hypothetically possible for China to sue in court and obtain title to great swaths of Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska etc. in exchange for the hundreds of billions we owe them. After all, in a bankruptcy proceeding, someone who has defaulted on a debt isn’t off scot-free. Whatever remaining assets they do have end up being divided up among various creditors etc. I’m no lawyer, but I don’t see any legal grounds for arguing that the feds should be able to hang on to land assets also presumably worth hundreds of billions even as it defaults on debts of equal size etc.
Let’s offer to send the illegals over to China to do landscaping work for seven years, and call it even.
Even if wrongly interpreted with full gusto (as has been done with the Commerce Clause or the General Welfare Clause) it doesn't change the fact that ONLY Congress can actually authorize debt. The debt ceiling is one mechanism for doing that, and no serious Constitutional lawyer would argue otherwise.
Good article here: Desperate, Devious and Dangerous: The Left’s 14th Amendment Ploy by Ernest Istook
The Chinese can go to the back of the line.
Killjoy.
IIRC, this was passed due to some politicians wanting to nullify debts and military pensions incurred by the Union in the Civil War.
Just another idiot that thinks money grows on trees.
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