Debt Ceiling (1 Viewer)

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    Lapaz

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    It's not justified at all. The GOP knows full well what happened last time they threatened this. Even if they blink first, it's going to be bad if they take it to the brink. Biden needs to come out and say that he doesn't care what the GOP says and that the US is good for any debt incurred and that if anyone in Congress objects to the US paying its obligations, they can take a flying leap.
     
    This is the money they already spent, both by R and D. Not sure what’s there to negotiate. It’s like refusing to pay your credit cards, car notes, and mortgages.
     
    This is the money they already spent, both by R and D. Not sure what’s there to negotiate. It’s like refusing to pay your credit cards, car notes, and mortgages.
    This is stated sometimes, but it isn't stated enough that this is paying for debts that have already been incurred. It has nothing to do with future budgets. People should always ask Republicans if they pay their credit card and other debts, or are they dead beats. Do they know what happens to people that don't pay their debts? Is that what they want for the country? Do they want to keep us great or make us poor and unworthy of credit?

    The question is why doesn't Biden direct to use the 14th amendment section 4 now, and declare that the debt limit is unconstitutional, rather than entertain the anarchists? They can take him to court, and should lose.

    "Amendment XIV​

    Section 4​

    The 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. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void."
     
    Which bills will the treasure pay? I assume most federal workers won't get paid. What about social security, medicaid, medicare, etc?
     
    Fourteenth Amendment, Section 4: The 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.

    …”shall not be questioned” sounds a lot like “shall not be infringed”….

    Biden will have to cite the 14th amendment and save the country by paying the bills anyway. It is the only play. It is a narrow path but if he pulls it off, he removes their lever currently being used as a cudgel now and forever.

    It will get challenged to the SCOTUS and should get funded while the case makes its way to them via temporary measures.

    That buys time at least because who know what the SCOTUS will do. I hold out hope for two reasons-

    1) So far, the awful decisions the SCOTUS rendered have been ideological, rather than political, in nature.
    Non-ideological cases haven’t been nearly as abhorrent.

    2) The friends of certain judges don’t benefit at all from a debt limit default.
     
    Fourteenth Amendment, Section 4: The 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.

    …”shall not be questioned” sounds a lot like “shall not be infringed”….

    Biden will have to cite the 14th amendment and save the country by paying the bills anyway. It is the only play. It is a narrow path but if he pulls it off, he removes their lever currently being used as a cudgel now and forever.

    It will get challenged to the SCOTUS and should get funded while the case makes its way to them via temporary measures.

    That buys time at least because who know what the SCOTUS will do. I hold out hope for two reasons-

    1) So far, the awful decisions the SCOTUS rendered have been ideological, rather than political, in nature.
    Non-ideological cases haven’t been nearly as abhorrent.

    2) The friends of certain judges don’t benefit at all from a debt limit default.


    Good article from Laurence Tribe on this argument.

     
    Can you give the gist? It's behind a pay wall.

    Section 4 of the 14th Amendment says the “validity” of the public debt “shall not be questioned” — ever. Proponents of the unconstitutionality argument say that when Congress enacted the debt limit, effectively forcing the United States to stop borrowing to honor its debts when that limit was reached, it built a violation of that constitutional command into our fiscal structure, and that as a result, that limit and all that followed are invalid.

    I’ve never agreed with that argument. It raises thorny questions about the appropriate way to interpret the text: Does Section 4, read properly, prohibit anything beyond putting the federal government into default? If so, which actions does it forbid? And, most important, could this interpretation open the door for dangerous presidential overreach, if Section 4 empowers the president single-handedly to declare laws he dislikes unconstitutional?

    I still worry about those questions. But I’ve come to believe that they are the wrong ones for us to be asking. While teaching constitutional law, I often explored the problem of bloated presidential power, the puzzle of preserving the rule of law in the face of unprecedented pressures, and the paradox of having to choose among a set of indisputably bad options. During my last semester teaching, with Covid forcing my seminars from the classroom to the video screen, I studied the most insightful literature on the debt ceiling and concluded that we need to reframe the argument.

    The question isn’t whether the president can tear up the debt limit statute to ensure that the Treasury Department can continue paying bills submitted by veterans’ hospitals or military contractors or even pension funds that purchased government bonds.

    The question isn’t whether the president can in effect become a one-person Supreme Court, striking down laws passed by Congress.

    The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.

    There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no.

    And there is only one person with the power to give Congress that answer: the president of the United States. As a practical matter, what that means is this: Mr. Biden must tell Congress in no uncertain terms — and as soon as possible, before it’s too late to avert a financial crisis — that the United States will pay all its bills as they come due, even if the Treasury Department must borrow more than Congress has said it can.
     
    Can you give the gist? It's behind a pay wall.

    Weird I don't have a sub, and I can read it.

    I would consider this the core of his argument.

    The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.

    There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no.
    And there is only one person with the power to give Congress that answer: the president of the United States. As a practical matter, what that means is this: Mr. Biden must tell Congress in no uncertain terms — and as soon as possible, before it’s too late to avert a financial crisis — that the United States will pay all its bills as they come due, even if the Treasury Department must borrow more than Congress has said it can.

    The president should remind Congress and the nation, “I’m bound by my oath to preserve and protect the Constitution to prevent the country from defaulting on its debts for the first time in our entire history.” Above all, the president should say with clarity, “My duty faithfully to execute the laws extends to all the spending laws Congress has enacted, laws that bind whoever sits in this office — laws that Congress enacted without worrying about the statute capping the amount we can borrow.”
    By taking that position, the president would not be usurping Congress’s lawmaking power or its power of the purse. Nor would he be usurping the Supreme Court’s power to “say what the law is,” as Chief Justice John Marshall once put it. Mr. Biden would simply be doing his duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” even if doing so leaves one law — the borrowing limit first enacted in 1917 — temporarily on the cutting room floor.
     
    We do need to start paying down the debt, but that should be part of the budget process. This is a stupid and twisted game the Republicans are playing. It’s also ludicrous and supremely hypocritical that Trump said defaulting was stupid only when he was president, but now it is acceptable. It shows how little he cares about the country. It’s all about him. The Republicans are just following his orders.
     
    We do need to start paying down the debt, but that should be part of the budget process. This is a stupid and twisted game the Republicans are playing.
    IKR!

    Man, I wish there was some sort of a parliamentary rule that deemed the debt ceiling raised when a budget was passed. This resolved the contradiction in voting for appropriations but not voting to fund them. Hell, they could amend the law governing the "debt ceiling" to include such a rule because you know Republican extremist will, undoubtedly, suspend the rule when they rule the House.

     
    I read that the credit rating has never recovered from that first time, but no idea whether that’s true or not.
     

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