The idea that we need law professors to interpret the Constitution for us implies unwarranted helplessness in understanding this great document. We simply need to read it. It’s written in plain English.

There’s no deep meaning to the 14th, one of the three Reconstruction amendments, except for Section 1 – equal rights. That’s the part with the most meaning.

Sections 2-5 were some housekeeping. Section 4 was to make sure that Civil War veterans received their pay, pensions, and bounty payments, and that debts incurred by the south (loans from French banks, etc.) were not to be paid by Washington.

Given that, it says what it says — pay the national debts.

Because the cognoscenti or as Digby suggests, “The Village” is all agog about paying the ‘due’ bills, I find this behavior to be reprehensible.

If the Republicans want to trash the economy, their utilizing the 14th Amendment as a ‘requirement’ for paying these due bills, America has voluntarily jumped down into the abyss and just to see itself splattered across the new media outlets. Or perhaps, Obama and Geithner have taken the ‘advice’ of the Murdoch Acolytes, for this “jumping down into the abyss” as their paen for “walking on water”?

Regardless, we, the folks on the proverbial Rez, have to laugh at this political silliness that has now turned into a providential happenstance, as the “new” America of the future. If so, bring on the IMF and their “surveillance” Schematic for our national embarrassment.

In the past, I have jokingly observed that if the Chinese want their monies, we should pay them with the ownership of a National Park. In doing so, the Chinese can build their nuclear arsenal into this National Park, and in so doing, the “old white guys” in Congress accomplished what they set out to do. To wit, the Corporate DEmocrats and the Corporate Republicans, will have turned America into a merchantilist/authoritarian nation for solely the “un-liberals.”

Jaango

Turley concluded that “the answer is that it’s not clear, it has not been tested…

God, I hope those were student council senators and not US senators that sought his legal advice. There’s a Supreme Court ruling DIRECTLY ON POINT!

PERRY V. UNITED STATES, 294 U. S. 330 (1935)

The government’s contention thus raises a question of far greater importance than the particular claim of the plaintiff. On that reasoning, if the terms of the government’s bond as to the standard of payment can be repudiated, it inevitably follows that the obligation as to the amount to be paid may also be repudiated. The contention necessarily imports that the Congress can disregard the obligations of the government at its discretion, and that, when the government borrows money, the credit of the United States is an illusory pledge…

The Constitution gives to the Congress the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States, an unqualified power, a power vital to the government, upon which in an extremity its very life may depend. The binding quality of the promise of the United States is of the essence of the credit which is so pledged. Having this power to authorize the issue of definite obligations for the payment of money borrowed, the Congress has not been vested with authority to alter or destroy those obligations.

In other words don’t try this (putting a self-imposed ceiling on your debt payments) at home. Your creditors won’t like it one little bit.

Thank you, beowolf.

Now, let the crappola among the Democrats and Republicans, commence and before the cameras. Thus, criminal stupidity becomes the norm in DC.

Jaango

Yes, I should have put that in the piece, I have mentioned Perry v. US before.

Thanks, Beowulf. I’d long been aware of the 14th-Ammendment option but hadn’t seen that ruling.

BTW, I’ve update my alternative proposal a bit and the current version is here.

Also, do you know where to find the law that requires that all deficits be covered by borrowing? Letsgetitdone says he has not been able to find a link to it.

Thanks again.

“To wit. . . ” methinks aside from a few bastions like The Sonoran Desert and The City (SF) your last sentence is already a present tense sitch.

I know I’M tense.

*G*

“But it shows that the Administration is fully aware of the tool. When asked yesterday whether the debt limit is Constitutional, President Obama just avoided the question. It was a three-part question and he only answered the other two parts. There’s an awareness at the highest levels that at the very least, an argument can be made, that there can be no questioning of the public debt – as a Constitutional matter. That’s a BFD.”

So the BFD is that in fact they are not making the argument, Obama is avoiding the question, which means he wants to deal stuff away when he doesn’t have to.

Yeah, sure, but that’s for us normal folks.

Let’s consider for just one moment, the Dems went to the prof NOT for interpretation but to find out how to circumvent.

Which lil detail, if true, is not generally reported anywhere.

I don’t think it’s a big leap of tin foil OR faith to assume the dems went to the prof for help to CIRCUMVENT.

I mean, the only proof I might have of that conjecture is only past history, Obama’s picks for his admin/cabinets, his and dem actions ever since he took office.

So I guess I COULD be wrong . . . (hint: I ain’t that humble).

Said proof of which is selling we the people down the river faster n a Missouri Rising 2011 Floodwater.

The PTB and the corp fascists are buying and creating ans writing and passing legislation faster n a speeding bullet, taller than the highest building . . . while we the people are outgunned n dying on the vine like bad grapes in a drought.

So the BFD is that in fact they are not making the argument, Obama is avoiding the question, which means he wants to deal stuff away when he doesn’t have to.

Well, since he announced his admin/cabinet picks, that’s generally been his modus operendi ever since . . . he is THE ENABLER for the elites, the 1% corporate fascist wealthy that own our Judiciary (SCOTUS), our Congress, our Executive . . . our military, our govt services, ad nauseum . . . and all that owns us, lock, stoc and barrell.

I don’t get what others don’t get that this is the reality Evelyn, you got any thots on that?

Pardon my ignorance, but isn’t this a slam dunk on this whole topic?

If this is the case, then congress has been pretending to have the power to control the “debt ceiling”.

I have seen this kind of ruse used effectively many times. Here in the 3rd world (FL) landlords failed to get a measure passed that said they could throw anyone out the first day they are late on the rent. The landlords just pretend that the law passed and the cops take their word for it and evict people at the immediate (day and hour) insistence of any landlord. The court won’t back them, but homeless people don’t really sue very much.

??? Nobody is disputing the requirement to pay off current debt. How is that verbiage supposed to relate to future debt? That’s the primary function of the House. Which currently has everything on hold.

Does anybody think this may be bit more egregious than Anthony’s Wiener?

Eric Cantor’s glaring conflict of interest
He’s the GOP’s chief debt ceiling negotiator. He’s also invested in a fund that will skyrocket if there’s a default

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/06/27/eric_cantor_conflict_of_interest

But you don’t hear THIS being trumpeted all over the place.

authorized by law

Which law? Is it the law that creates spending (i.e. budget, SS, Medicare, implementers, etc.)? Or is it the debt ceiling law?

Having this power to authorize the issue of definite obligations for the payment of money borrowed, the Congress has not been vested with authority to alter or destroy those obligations.

But when the USG issues SS checks, is that money “borrowed” per se? Borrowed sounds to me like money already spent.

Hi wigwam and beowulf, Thanks for the link to your Kos diary. The diary I posted here containing the discussion thread we collaborated on disappeared, along with all my other MyFDL diaries after the update a few days ago. Also, I’m having trouble posting, though not commenting hence my lack of an appearance at your last post here. In any event, I cross-posted a diary here: http://www.correntewire.com/debt_ceiling_emnotem_unconstitutional_right_now

and

here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/30/990018/-The-Debt-Ceiling-Is-Not-Unconstitutional,-Right-Now!?via=history

That diary argues that the debt limit is not unconstitutional due to the presence of jumbo coin seigniorage as a way of acquiring revenue to place in the Treasury General Account. The diary also references your variation on Beowulf’s coin seigniorage notion, and my proposal to use it to stop issuing debt altogether.

If my ability to post diaries gets straightened out here soon, I’ll cross-post it here as well.

Not only that. You don’t see anyone demanding his resignation! Except us, of course!

The debt ceiling law has never had any practical force. It’s pure theater, political grandstanding. It sets up an inherent contradiction in legal requirements on the administration that would arise on every occasion when the law might come into play. This law says that the US cannot borrow past a certain ceiling. But that stricture exists in the same universe as the many obligations to pay out money to all sorts of payees that the Congress created when it passed hundreds of other laws.

These laws creating the obligation to pay out money are still out there, unrepealed, and still carry the same formal legal force as the law that would forbid such payments once we reach the debt ceiling. Exceeding the limit would put the administration in the position of having contradictory legal requirements upon it, to spend obligated money, and at the same time to not spend if the money paid out has to come from borrowing above the limit. This contradiction means that one horn of the dilemma must be thrown out on judicial review. One of these laws, or sets of laws, has to be declared null, because the law cannot place contradictory requirements on any entity.

Of course the administration will choose to ignore the debt ceiling. Sure, that would be illegal, but so would ignoring the obligation to pay what the law obligates that the US pay. The adminstration will choose the illegality that has this advantage, that it doesn’t also cause fiscal and economic Armageddon, in addtion to the feature that both choices have of being illegal. If that decision is litigated, it’s hard to see how the courts would fail to approve that choice, would fail to resolve the contradiction the same way, by throwing out the debt ceiling as creating an inherent contradiction to hundreds of other laws the Congress has passed since it passed the current debt ceiling law.

That’s all without the 14th, which is nice to have in the pocket, and I’m sure will be appealed to if it comes to that, and the administration has to defend ignoring the debt ceiling. But the 14th isn’t really necessary here. The debt ceiling law would be thrown out on judicial review anyway, if the courts even bothered to grant cert to somebody challenging the administration after it decides not to bring the Apocalypse.

There is only one proper and legal way to reduce the national debt. Pass some combination of laws increasing revenues and/or reducing expenditures. You need both House and Senate, plus the president, to pass or repeal laws. Now, if you only have the House, and are not content to settle only for what is your due — if you think you have some God-given right that the Constitution failed to give you to bypass those pesky requirements for reducing the deficit legally and Constitutionally — then you indeed have no other recourse but to go beyond the law and beyond the Constitution, and grasp at a unilateral power that would let the House rule by unilateral decree, and pretend that this debt ceiling law gives you that power, by way of the power to take the economy hostage that you imagine it gives you. But that power would be entirely in your imagination, it doesn’t really exist.

What’s hard to explain here is why anyone treats these nuts as if it wasn’t all just in their imagination. Does the administration actually want to end the social safety net, and is just using the fake threat of default as an excuse? Are they just trying to humor the nuts in order to avoid the messy public spectacle of the constitutional hard ball involved in just ignoring the ceiling?

If Obama and the Dems acknowledge that the 14th Amendment means what it says, then how are they going to allow the Republicans to “force” them to cut entitlements?

There’s an odd, paradoxical bit of humor enmeshed in this wrinkle over the debt and obligation “debate”. It was Hamilton who, with his multi-part scheme to put the foundling nation on sturdier financial footing than the Articles allowed, established the sacrosanct nature of US government debt obligations. Jeffersonians may have blanched, but the thousands of Revolutionary War vets who were long unpaid – and who also most closely fit Thom’s “Yeoman Farmer” archetype – were delighted to finally receive their cash.

The humorous bit is surfaced in this question, will the Federalist Society now seek a new Founding Father image for their masthead and iconography? What are the myopic literalists to do?

Just try to get away with it by pushing a “false framing” of the problem. Obama is the master of false framing.

Oh come on Don it’s just a damn piece o paper according to G.W. Bushitler.

I was struck, slapped in the face really, by one statement from Jonathan Turley:

There is some problem with what the President is arguing.
It would effectively take the congress out of the picture, practically, it terms of debt issues, which are very important to the economy.

Oh, Really?

The House of Representatives has complete control over debt issues. The President can propose a budget, but the House approves or dis-approves it. All spending measures must pass both chambers.

Now that the money is spent, a minority of reactionary House members (read Tea Party) want to play political games and put the credit score of America at risk.

Mr. Turley‘s claims that the President honoring these debts would "take congress out of the picture" are absurd. Claiming the president doesn‘t have the power to pay the bills, on laws the Congress passed, is like calling the cable company and saying you can‘t pay your bill because your spouse hid the checkbook.

If the Congress didn‘t want HBO, they shouldn‘t have signed up for it.