Posted on 06/28/2011 2:52:34 PM PDT by reaganaut1
In the ongoing debate over raising the debt ceiling, one option has not had much prominence: whether the Obama administration could ignore it altogether, and just spend the money it owes anyway. Would that be legal?
Matthew Zeitlin at The New Republic spoke with a few political scientists, budget wonks and constitutional scholars who argue that it would be. An excerpt:
Garrett Epps, a legal journalist and professor at University of Baltimore School of Law, has made an even broader argument in a pair of articles for The Atlantic’s website. In an interview, Epps told me that there was a strong argument that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional because it exceeds the legislative branch’s power of the purse. The argument goes like this: Because Congress already appropriated the funds in question, it is the executive branch’s duty to enact those appropriations. The debt ceiling, then, is legislative “double-counting,” because the executive branch is obligated to spend the money Congress appropriates, without having to go back and ask again for permission.
Of course, ignoring the debt ceiling could have some severe political consequences, especially since most Americans do not seem to realize that doing so primarily requires making good on payments already promised, as opposed to committing to new spending. That may explain why most Americans still are against raising the ceiling.
(Excerpt) Read more at economix.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Because, like Bill Cosby said on “The Cosby Show” to his son, Theo, about taxes:
“They come for the normal people first.”
The stunting seems to be limited to those times when they know they don’t have the votes. They just dragged out the second old bit... the self-fulfilling prophesy routine... this afternoon.
“Could Congress Just Impeach Obama If He Ignores The Debt Ceiling?”
No. Obama CANNOT be impeached for any reason, any more than you ar I can be, since he is NOT a legitimate President, owing to his foreign birth. The “Birth certificate” is fraudulent. Obama will have to be EVICTED form the White House, a process which could take a year or more, under current District of Columbia standards.
I think that's a good trial balloon.
All the more reason not to raise it, if he could just spend the money anyway. Why provide him with political cover?
The article talks about spending, not borrowing. If they can find the money somewhere without borrowing, sure, they can spend it.
The problem is that the first priority needs to be to pay off all of the T-Bills and Notes maturing every week, plus the interest on the both the maturing and the outstanding debt. The maturities could be funded with new borrowing because their cancellation lowers the debt outstanding below the ceiling, but the interest becomes a problem. At some point, there’s no money left and we default on the interest, unless the debt ceiling is raised.
The alternative to the above scenario is to stop paying other obligations, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense contracts, military payroll, staff payroll, etc. This is what will, in fact, happen because they can’t issue debt above the debt ceiling legally. Then politics will dictate the winners and losers, as in 1994.
What he absolutely can’t do legally is issue new debt above and beyond the debt ceiling without Congressional authorization. The unauthorized debt would not be purchased by the public unless a penalty interest rate were applied to it. How big a penalty would depend on the politics of the moment. If a Republican leader said that all debt issued beyond the debt ceiling does not, and would never, carry the full faith and credit of the U.S., no one would purchase it without a huge penalty rate being applied.
I have long felt that your idea IS the answer. Say 15 million people simply refuse to file a return. What would they do?
Yes, I know, me first, right? Of course some would go to jail but what if that 15 million became 30, then 50, then half the nation? If the People just refused to go along with the game the whole thing crashes down.
I have heard the libs say the Senate will concoct a way to go around the House, declaring the debt ceiling unconstitutional.
“nobama can do anything he damn well pleases...until someone stops him. This marxist/socialist/anti-Free-America thug will just what he pleases to do. Just who is going to stop him?”
One truth seems to be emerging.
That truth is:
The Republican party is NOT going to “stop him”.
If not them, who?
Just askin’....
"White House officials even talk privately about the galvanizing political benefit of a bond market crisis, which would force panicked Members of Congress to accept a big new value-added tax. The President's two looming tax reports -- one from his deficit commission and the other from Paul Volcker's economic advisory group -- are intended to propose a VAT and other tax options. Whatever their initial reception, the proposals will be there to be pulled from the shelf when the political moment is right. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703426004575338991852947182.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
Everyone needs to quit hyperventilating about this. Congress, and Congress alone, has the authority to issue the debt of the United States. The debt ceiling is just their way of saying, “you’re authorized to issue debt up to the following amount.” Until they increase that amount, the President has no authority to exceed it, nor does the Treasury Secretary.
Conceivably they could buy some time by playing games with the Federal Reserve holdings, or maybe even with the debt previously issued to the social security system (though this is not public debt), but ultimately it’s up to Congress, i.e., the House of Representatives and the Republican majority, to increase the debt limit.
My money is on Obama caving and agreeing to a pretty significant reduction in the next Continuing Resolution. Until we get a responsible Senate again, that is a Republican one, we are not likely to get a formal budget, so all we can do is keep whittling away at the current budget as determined by the last Continuing Resolution.
What we aren’t going to get is higher taxes. That would be Republican hari-kari in the present environment. With the next election almost certain to be totally about fiscal responsibility, this is not 1994 redux. At least that’s how I see it. The grownups aren’t yet back in charge, but they have at least recovered the checkbook from the children.
>>> I’ll add a caveat: There is one way he could, but it is along the lines of dictatorship, but a new hybrid for the new millennium. They seem to be pretty creative with that stuff.<<<
This is what I fear, too. Of course any American dictatorship will be creative in its implementation and administration, since the Founders did such a good job of undermining tryanny. Mark Levin calls it “soft tryanny.” I’ve worked most of my life in the print media and academia, so I can even see the experimental methods to establish a dictatorship on the sly being worked out in those professions.
From the print media side, there’s the use of embarressment and ridicule to diminish opposition. It’s quite good, and it doesn’t kill or imprison anyone while still maintaining power with the left. Palin’s wilding is a great example, but you can go back to the famous anti-Goldwater nuclear bomb ad to see examples. Palin is still allowed to speak, but her words come to you through a cloud of beliefs about her competence, intelligence, and wisdom. Alinsky points out that ridicule is impossible to defend against. On our side, we have Limbaugh mocking Ted Kennedy as “the philanderer,” which did the same thing to Ted that happened to Palin, but the media leftists stay on message and frankly own the bigger guns.
From the academic side, I can see dictatorship by committee. Everything is fair, in a way. There are volumes of rules, and everyone kowtows for diversity, but in the end, the conservatives, if they are loud, never seem to get the plum assignments. Do the wrong thing and you’ll be put on a plan of improvement. There are committees about committees, and the planning is endless.
For the larger culture, the dictatorship will be expressed in the same manner as the protodictators decided to ban incandescent lights and large-volume toilets. Someone will draw up a rule which will be enforced by an agency. Break the regulation, pay the fine. Maybe go to a posh hotel with a free breakfast over a weekend for a workshop admonishing you about what to do differently next time. Mao Tse-tung lite. Over time, of course, the regulators will try to move you to do the right thing, one regulation at a time.
And if you imagine you’re a Wolverine, who do you fight? That guy in a cubicle carrying out regulations from another guy in a cubicle? He’s just a guy. The head of state? That will get rid of a thousand agencies and the million bureaucrats? Your member of Congress? You mean the guy who funds all the agencies hiring your neighbors and family, and quite possibly yourself?
I hate to say this, but if we go this way, we have the opportunity to become the modern version of the Byantines, literally living off the greatness of our past, hidebound in the present.
I give all my prognostications 100 percent probability of being absolute Bravo Sierra. In any case, God help us.
Garrett Epps was in my law school graduating class. He was older than most of us & had come from a career as.... a Washington Post reporter.
This spending issue is the fight of our lives. Democrats (a/k/a, the media) don’t accept that the Reagan recovery from the Carter years was due to conservative fiscal policy.
I used to think that politicians of all stripes understood that permitting people and businesses to retain more of their own money - and lessening the regulatory burden - would stimulate growth.
Thus I viewed Dem spending & taxing as calculated - because it was
easier to buy votes from the ignorant + irresponsible by telling them that they didn’t need to take care of themselves, the gov’t would do it.
The current crisis has revealed to me that many of these Dems really
think that the New Deal spending pulled us out of the Great Depression. I’ve repeatedly heard Alan Colmes shrieking that the only problem with
Porkulus is that it wasn’t big enough.
Fight like hell to elect fiscal conservatives at every level of gov’t. Be a poll watcher. Call your Congressman and remind him or her that this is not business as usual. Wasteful spending needs to stop now or we will be Greece.
Hmmm, new constitutional Obama Doctrine, courtesy of the New York Slimes:
"The senators being fewer than 2/3's against him, the President shall do whatever the hell he wants, and his Word shall be a Law unto the People."
Trust the Times to run that one up a flagpole for a hard-Left DemonRat.
The international bond market and foreign exchange markets will clear up that illusion.
Two words: Black juries. As in, "O.J."
You would have to (somehow) order the Army to lay siege to the city and take it from its inhabitants block by block, killing everything that moved until you got to Obama and his dogs fighting in the last ditch.
It'd be like that, white boy.
How long before the would-be masters of the planet in the U.N., and our undertakers-wannabe, send an international military expedition, and the war's on for real?
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