Those promoting this theory have gotten very specific about how the president will pull this off. (Epps has even taken the time to prewrite the speech Obama could give.) The president would just direct the Treasury Department to keep selling bonds. Obama would explain that the Republicans have left him no choice. The Constitution requires him to see that the laws are faithfully executed, but if he executes the debt ceiling law, he will be failing to execute the scores of laws that Congress has passed and that create the need for new borrowing. Put in this position, Henry Aaron argued this week, the president should follow the least bad option and break the ceiling.
One possible impediment to this plan would be that the White House legal counsel has said the president doesn't have this authority under the Constitution. Sure, but the president can just get another opinion or claim the situation demanded it. He's done that kind of back bend on matters of national security. He granted a waiver to businesses for the Affordable Care Act. A president can always find a workaround.
But the White House says finding a narrow legal rationale for this break-glass emergency measure would do no good because it would offer no certainty to financial markets—and staving off global economic chaos is what this whole exercise is about. "We'd break the glass, but it would only keep the house on fire," says a senior White House aide. The gambit would be up for dispute in the courts and invite chaos in Congress. While the president may be willing to take a political hit for doing something edgy to save the economy, his treasury secretary and economic advisers worry most about the disruption the ensuing legal fights would cause. At the very least........."
“Wouldn’t it be better to save the nation from default by invoking the Fourteenth Amendment, than to stand by and do nothing?”
Reid took the 14th off the table a long while ago....Pelosi said the other day she wants him to bring it back and it never should have been taken off...so they are already considering this.
<....” Obam... granted a waiver to businesses for the Affordable Care Act”....>
That is against the law, he legally could ‘not change’ the AHCA law once it had past...so he’s been breaking the law for some time now.
“What would Jack Slater do?” is the better question.