14th Amendment

[MoonRiver]

Is this a viable option for Obama if teabags won't fund the government? Just heard it might be on Up With Steve Kornacki.

snip - 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. - snip

also:

snip -Section 4 confirmed the legitimacy of all U.S. public debt appropriated by the Congress. It also confirmed that neither the United States nor any state would pay for the loss of slaves or debts that had been incurred by the Confederacy. For example, during the Civil War several British and French banks had lent large sums of money to the Confederacy to support its war against the Union.[152] In Perry v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court ruled that under Section 4 voiding a United States bond "went beyond the congressional power."[153]
The debt-ceiling crisis in 2011 raised the question of what powers Section 4 gives to the President, an issue that remains unsettled.[154] Some, such as legal scholar Garrett Epps, fiscal expert Bruce Bartlett and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have argued that a debt ceiling may be unconstitutional and therefore void as long as it interferes with the duty of the government to pay interest on outstanding bonds and to make payments owed to pensioners (that is, Social Security recipients).[155][156] Legal analyst Jeffrey Rosen has argued that Section 4 gives the President unilateral authority to raise or ignore the national debt ceiling, and that if challenged the Supreme Court would likely rule in favor of expanded executive power or dismiss the case altogether for lack of standing.[157] Erwin Chemerinsky, professor and dean at University of California, Irvine School of Law, has argued that not even in a "dire financial emergency" could the President raise the debt ceiling as "there is no reasonable way to interpret the Constitution that [allows him to do so]".[158]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

[HereSince1628]

1. Do you mean Obama should stop paychecks for House teaheads?

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

[MoonRiver]

2. I'm not sure how that would work.

Like I said it was mentioned on Kornacki, and a Democratic Congressman said Obama might have to use it. Hence my question here!

[HereSince1628]

3. Maybe the administration cites Woo and declares the teaheads in rebellion against the US

Considering the gift of unbounded power of the president as CIC provided by Yoo's woo, maybe there is a path to cut off the pay of representatives in open rebellion against the constitution.

Seems as viable an option as stamping a platinum zillion dollar coin.

[Igel]

4. Rosen defines any obligation as "public debt."

T-bills authorized by Congress are public debt. So is the bill for paperclips. As well as the open-ended commitment to pay for your Uncle Bert's Medicare and the block grant going to Oklahoma for something-or-other.

And since authorization spend rather implies obligation to spend, it assumes that any budgeted amount is authorization to incur more public debt.

Congress authorizes a debt limit and the Constitution says Congress alone authorizes public debt.

Congress also has sole authority to determine a budget. (It's a court decision that says the President must expense the budget instead of having a kind of budgetary "prosecutorial discretion" to leave a part unspent.)

The claim is that the authority to determine the budget and the court decision overrides the authority to issue public debt. Historically--in the sense of "for the last couple of centuries"--it's pretty much been the other way around. Rather like a family that makes a household budget that includes a vacation and entertainment and then, seeing that income has decreased or expenses increased, limits the debt that can be incurred and so limits the vacation and entertainment. As opposed to claiming that since the budget allows for certain expenses, there's no need to consider whether to incur more debt, the vacation's obviously still on.

Sadly, Congress should be able to handle this. Neither is willing to compromise or give in to avoid a shut-down. (And, yes, given that there are really two sides here, it is a two-partner tango. Such things always are.)

[MoonRiver]

6. I'm not sure if you addressed the constitutionality of Obama raising the debt limit

unilaterally. From what I read it is a gray/untested area. Seems Obama would have to go out on a limb and test his authority through SCOTUS.

[treestar]

12. Right.

It would be an interesting question. And one the Republicans brought upon themselves. It depends on how serious this default thing would be to make it worth testing.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

11. I would think it would be authorization to meet previously incurred debt

But what is also unquestioned is, only congress can authorize new spending.

Neither is willing to compromise or give in to avoid a shut-down. (And, yes, given that there are really two sides here, it is a two-partner tango. Such things always are.)

In a perverse way, it makes sense. It's better this way as it avoids a unitary executive. I would rather have that then allow Dick Cheney's next pod person have that much power.

[Romulox]

5. No. The President needs new money, which he has no power to raise. These are fringe theories. nt

[bornskeptic]

7. That's not true. The treasury issues bills, bonds, and notes as needed in normal times.

If the president orders it to do so after a debt ceiling is reached, it will continue to do so.

[Romulox]

8. Printing new money devalues all the existing money out there. He needs new revenues to fund

the government at the levels required.

[bornskeptic]

9. To the extent that that's true, it's not relevant anyway.

All Obama would be doing by ordering the issue of more debt obligations is asking that the government continue to handle its finances as it always has. The federal government never actually needs to raise revenue to finance operations because it always can find parties to buy its debt. That might change if it were to default on its current obligations. I hope it doesn't come to that, but if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling, the president will be obligated to use his emergency powers to avert the consequences of a US default. It's not just a possibility that he would do so. It's a virtual certainty.

[Romulox]

10. If there is no buyer for the debt (as in a scenario where a trillion dollar coin is minted), then

all the government can offer is the existing supply of money. That is to say, it would not be new money, but rather would come as a tiny sliver from everyone's existing piece of the pie.

The President cannot float debt to foreign buyers on his authority. It's Constitutional.