Should the White House be talking to the Supreme Court Justices...?
What is the procedure to get the Supreme Court to rule on a case? Does the Congress have the right to not pay our debts? Does the President have the authority to execute the laws? Does the 14th Amendment apply to the Congress? Would it be too much of a gamble to ask the Supreme Court to rule on the authority of the Congress to not pay our debts?
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Proponents of the option point to Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which says that the “validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payments of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” It follows, then, that the president could raise the government's borrowing limit, independent of congressional gridlock -- a potential way forward as the government again approaches a shutdown.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/30/14th-amendment-option_n_4018599.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
I may be full of shit on this, but I don't think so. I guess I have to just shrug. You're getting into esoteric matters where experts in law should decide.
Thankfully President Obama likely knows the limits and powers of his office.
As always,
Best regards.
Very educational.
and I should preface this with I am not a lawyer.
The President doesn't want to use the 14th option, but God forbid the House of Representatives allows this fiasco to drag out until the 17th and Obama is faced with "The Government will run completely out of money reserves and borrowing authority in the next 60 seconds."
At this point, I see not one but four options:
1) President says we pay as we go. All government expenses are paid as receipts come in. Honoring the national debt comes before anything else, including national security and defense. There would be enough inflow to keep the national debt serviced, but everything else including essential government services would get hammered. Very, very, very badly. If not eliminated entirely. Massive austerity on a scale not even before seen under Hoover results, we enter the Greater Depression.
2) Call up the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and start printing. I'm not sure to what extent this is even an option because I don't really know if this would involve "borrowing" from the Federal Reserve, and thus breaching the debt ceiling. Cue Weimar Republic hyperinflation.
3) Default. I don't think I need to explain this one.
4) The 14th Option.
By this point, I suspect the President will have very strong public backing/a mandate for Option Number Four. If the President's hand is truly forced literally at the last minute (God forbid), it is the least bad option. Don't get me wrong, it's still a bad option as no one would know if the bonds would later be invalidated and therefore the interest rate would skyrocket, taking the economy crashing down with it. But the other available options, should the Cruz Missile Kamikaze Party force the Union to that point, are even worse. (While Option 2 might superficially seem like an alternative, it will almost certainly lead to hyperinflation, whereas Option 4 at least has a reasonable shot at containing the damage, especially should it later be upheld.)
If it comes to the 14th, the Congress (in practice, the House of Representatives, as the Senate has the grown-ups in that room) then has two options:
1) Ratify the President's actions. The subsequent debt issues are honored, the economy is shaken badly, but it might (eventually) be recoverable if the Republicans self-destruct and leave the grown-ups in charge to clean up the mess.
2) Or they could sue the executive to have the debt ceiling breach declared unconstitutional. This would take a while to work its way up to SCOTUS (at which point I'm sure Wall Street will be ringing up its servants demanding they affirm the 14th in an attempt to salvage the economy, judicial ethics be damned). Horrific economic damage occurs in the meantime, but if the SCOTUS upholds the 14th Option, Republicans self-destruct and responsible adults are left to try to clean up the mess (but it will take much longer than it would if Congress had assented to the 14th in the first place).
The President doesn't want to use the 14th. His authority to do it is untested and tenuous. If the Congress should fail to honor its responsibilities, it is his last option to save the country. The public would support him doing what he must, but would the courts?
He will do what he must. But of course he will hold his cards close to his chest, and deny that he would openly defy the recalcitrant House until the choice becomes either that or allowing the Union to implode.
I don't want to go back to 1860. Why is it come to this, that I even have to contemplate the day being barely more than two weeks away. 
The kind of stuff I like to see more of on DU.
A manufactured crises has been created by a faction of the Republican party (i refuse to use the term "GOP" if not psychotic, certainly sociopathic) is holding our country hostage - what the hell can actually be done about that?
I love the questions, the various responses based on historical grounding, and offered with various points of views in a manner which conversations should happen, and I got to learn some things I hadn't known before.
Bravo to everyone here...
