General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The validity of the public debt of the U.S.....shall not be questioned (14th Amendment) [View all]Igel
(35,300 posts)If you anticipate income and make a budget based upon it, you expect your family to stay within those limits. Esp. if you say, "This month nobody will incur more than $100 dollars in credit card debt that we can't pay off at the end of the month."
If something interrupts the income, you don't expect your wife or kid or other to say, "But I'm budgeted for this much money. I'm going to spend it, put $400 on the credit card, and you damned will accept the credit card debt because you already said I could."
Except you didn't say so. So there's authorized spending, assuming the revenues hold true. Then there's the credit card, for purchases beyond revenue projections or in the event of a revenue drop off. You want both.
You sort of want a Deist approach to budgeting. Somebody makes the budget and then stands back, unable to say anything about it and really disinterested in what happens because then only the spenders have any real say. It's a nice way of abrogating Congressional authority and making the president's post even more imperial.
As for the rest, "public debt" has a definition, and yours ain't it. It actually has two definitions, and I don't know if the only important Constitutional law experts (viz. SCOTUS) have weighed in as to which definition applies here. Def. 1: Debt issued by the Treasury dept. and held by the public. Def. 2: Debt issued by any branch of government, and held either by the public or by another branch of government.
Important distinction there. But it's still the case that a lot of debts aren't "public debt."