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The Spectacle Blog
If President Obama unilaterally raises the nation’s debt ceiling without the consent of Congress, it would be an “impeachable act,” Congressman Tim Scott (R-S.C.) told his constituents.
(Incidentally, I said the same thing in this space two days ago.)
Scott said
This president is looking to usurp congressional oversight to find a way to get it done without us. My position is that is an impeachable act from my perspective. There’s lots of things people say, ‘Are you going to impeach the president over that?’ - No. But this? This is catastrophic. This jeopardizes the credibility of our nation if one man can usurp the entire system set up by our Founding Fathers over something this significant.
The congressman seemed to suggest a constitutional crisis was in the offing.
“I think we’ll find ourselves in the biggest war of all time if he does that or if he even tries to do that … there will be a revolt among the American people …”
To community organizers like President Obama the Constitution is an agglomeration of technicalities that needs to be overcome in order to achieve so-called social justice.
* * * * *
America needs to know that ACORN is restructuring in time to help re-elect President Obama in 2012. Obama used to work for ACORN and represented the group in court as its lawyer. These radical leftists who use the brutal, in-your-face, pressure tactics of Saul Alinsky want to destroy America as we know it and will use any means to do it.
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DRed| 7.7.11 @ 3:19PM
You know what else would jeopardize the credibility of our nation? Refusing to pay our debts. Time to get real, Republicans.
Mike 3/505| 7.7.11 @ 3:37PM
Refusing to raise the debt ceiling is not refusing to pay debts. There is plenty of revenue to service the debt...both principal and interest. The deficit is being caused by too many unconstitutional items in the budget...medicaid for one...social security & Medicare for another. Department of education is another entity that has no constitutional basis and could be dissolved, thus saving billions. Ergo, anyone who says we must raise the debt limit in order to avoid default is either stupid or lying...period.
David W| 7.7.11 @ 3:58PM
Can you please identify a quote by a Republican/Conservative member of the House or Senate whereby he/she states that he/she does not want to pay on the debt? They want to cut spending, and raising the debt ceiling allows the government to spend more money and to take on more debt (as opposed to not paying on the debt we have).
If you are unable to find such a quote, then you have damaged your credibility by accusing the Republicans/Conservatives of wanting to do something that they have no intention of doing and have shown that you have completely bought into the propaganda spewing forth from the libtards.
DRed| 7.7.11 @ 5:22PM
Raising the debt ceiling allows the government to keep paying both its debt and the spending the Republicans agreed on in the last budget. Our debt obligations aren't just what we owe to foreign bondholders. It includes, for example, payments we (republicans and democrats both) agreed to make to people on unemployment. Abruptly cutting federal spending by 40% (what we'd need to do if we don't raise the debt ceiling) would be committing economic suicide. Do you want to go right back into a steep recession? No? You think you can win elections in a year after ruining the American economy? Since when did not fulfilling your fiscal obligations become a conservative strategy?
CalMark| 7.7.11 @ 6:39PM
Government income is approximately $180 to $200B per month. Debt service is approximately $20B per month. That means there's plenty of money to pay the debt.
Get real, Democrat. Debt service takes precedence over "money for votes" special interests.
P.S. If Obama does this unilaterally, he is becomes a dictator. And there will be hell to pay for people like you.
DRed| 7.7.11 @ 6:52PM
The government has an obligation to pay the money it's agreed to pay. You think other countries aren't going to notice that the United States suddenly doesn't pay what it says it's going to? Not even to its own citizens? What's that going to do to our bond rating? What you're advocating is insanely reckless. You don't think there's going to be hell to pay when you tell people on social security you're cutting their benefit payments by 40% so you can maintain your precious ideological purity? When some poor unemployed bastard sends his kids to bed hungry is he going to console them by telling them that CalMark thought there was plenty of money? You're living in a fantasy.
CalMark| 7.7.11 @ 7:01PM
READ WHAT I WROTE, YOU IDIOT.
Government income is approximately $180 to $200B per month. Debt service is approximately $20B per month. That means there's plenty of money to pay the debt.
DRed| 7.7.11 @ 7:08PM
Yes, I read what you wrote. It was ignorant drivel. The government isn't trying to raise the debt ceiling just to pay the interest on it's debt. The government has an obligation to make many, many other payments, and it needs to borrow money to do so. Defense payments, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc. Those are obligations. Debts, if you will. We need to pay them, and we need to raise the debt ceiling to do that. You call yourself a conservative and you think we should walk away from our obligations? You anti-government utopian fantastics are less conservative than I am.
Bob Grant| 7.7.11 @ 7:24PM
Red,
When does this vicious cycle of raising the debt while pushing more and more people under the entitlement tent end? ...
Raise it now, fine. Raise it again next year, fine.
You DO realize the cost of doing so don't you? You DO realize the economy can never grow under these circumstances, don't you?
You DO realize that because the economy can never grow the only way to pay for this insanity is QE4, QE5, QE6...?
CalMark| 7.7.11 @ 7:09PM
P.S. Your scaremongering is contemptible. The money should come out of the hides of programs (almost entirely "vote purchasing for Democrats") born since Obama took office.
You liberals screamed bloody murder about Bush/GOP Congress deficits (average: ~$150B per year), but now, suddenly, the Republic can't POSSIBLY survive without Obama's $1.6 Trillion deficits. Huh?
If you were honest and rational, YOU wouldn't have to "hold a gun to the head" of retirees, the military, etc.
Mike 3/505| 7.7.11 @ 9:32PM
The government has NO obligation to fund the department of education, the EPA nor Medicaid to name a few. As for Social Security and Medicare, both of those programs are unconstitutional. However, because the government has improperly robbed folks of their hard-earned dollars with the promise of later payment then the obligation the government DOES have is to continue paying those folks already drawing benefits. Folks that aren't drawing benefits should be given an immediate lump sum payment from the government based on what they've paid in...both FICA and Medicare. The government could then get out of that business entirely...problem solved.
DREd| 7.7.11 @ 11:45PM
Bob, I do realize the cost. We most definitely do need to reduce federal spending. But we can't do it in such an insanely irresponsible fashion. To some degree, I agree with you. But we have agreed to fund a certain level of spending.. I understand you don't agree with that. That's fine. But to simply abrogate our agreements would be a catastrophe for this country, and that's what I don't agree with.
To mike and calmark, and mike, we absolutely have an obligation to do what we said we were going to do. I'm not scaremongering. Failing to meet our legal obligations would be a disaster. Not paying our obligations would make us, essentially, a third world country and would plunge us into another recession, at the least. I love this country, and it's unfathomable to me why you would want us to go this route.
"If the maintenance of public credit, then, be truly so important, the next enquiry which suggests itself is, by what means it is to be effected? The ready answer to which question is, by good faith, by a punctual performance of contracts. States, like individuals, who observe their engagements, are respected and trusted: while the reverse is the fate of those, who pursue an opposite conduct."
-Alexander Hamilton
beebop| 7.8.11 @ 5:57AM
When you promise what you can't provide simply to pacify your electorate you eventually prove yourself an irresponsible liar. Too damn bad. I don't feel any responsibility to continue the fantasy.
Bob Grant| 7.8.11 @ 9:02AM
Your solution is to raise the debt ceiling (which won't be the last), and, as a result, economic growth will be stunted. Because taxing evil rich people will not increase revenues in the long term, another round of quantitative easing will ensue, thus making your and my dollars worth even less.
These "legal contracts with society" might be upheld but what good is worthless money?
The economy MUST grow to get us out of this mess. Obama's policies are antithetical to economic growth.
beebop| 7.8.11 @ 5:54AM
"the spending the Republicans agreed on in the last budget."
And what/when was that "budget" passed? Certainly not under the resident's tenure.
Bob Grant| 7.7.11 @ 5:08PM
Yes, by cutting taxes and growing the economy. As Senator Rubio brilliantly put it: Let's talking about creating more tax payers instead of raising taxes.
Stan Redmond| 7.8.11 @ 9:01AM
Wow. Just wow. Astounding ignorance.
Mike| 7.7.11 @ 3:37PM
Good luck. Congress didn't have the nuts to impeach the president for any of his prior offenses, or even bother to investigate the BC issue, and all they're going to do now is stand around like a bunch of monkey's and fling poo on each other.
It's what they do.
BriereBear| 7.7.11 @ 3:38PM
Here we go about ACORN again! Fueling the uneducated masses with lies and rhetoric! Here's the conservative and GOP strategy: watch the economy tank, then blame the president. How about those jobs you PROMISED us?
Mike 3/505| 7.7.11 @ 3:46PM
No problem on the jobs...get rid of all the BS taxes and regulations...make a more business friendly environment and the jobs will return. Right now, because the cost per employee is high and trending higher, businesses are not hiring...it's a no-brainer that liberals and their hired thugs called unions, fail to understand.
Bentelligence| 7.7.11 @ 3:45PM
I am going to approach this Constitutional debate from another angle. That President Obama would risk impeachment by NOT acting under the 14th Amendment to prevent default.
Whether any of us like it or not it this debt ceiling debate is all about the “obligations” that Congress over time has signed into law, not the bonds.
The ceiling raise has nothing to do with future spending, only that which has already been committed to by this and prior sessions of Congress over out history.
We elected them, they act via their Constitutional responsibility passes laws/funding programs, we own it and has the “full faith and credit” of the US behind it. These are all laws that then need to be upheld, ie honored.
The Constitution is by definition the original document plus any and all Amendments to it so trying to separate the two is a specious argument as well.
In PERRY V. UNITED STATES, 294 U. S. 330 (1935)SCOTUS addreses the larger context of debt as “obligations” that further supports the notion that default would be unconstitutional and thus stopping it would be required of the President:
“…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.
We do not so read the Constitution….To say that the Congress may withdraw or ignore that pledge is to assume that the Constitution contemplates a vain promise; a pledge having no other sanction than the pleasure and convenience of the pledgor. This Court has given no sanction to such a conception of the obligations of our government.
The Fourteenth Amendment, in its fourth section, explicitly declares: ‘The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, * * * shall not be questioned.’ ...Nor can we perceive any reason for not considering the expression ‘the validity of the public debt’ as embracing whatever concerns the integrity of the public obligations.”
The office of the President as “Chief Executive” is empowered by the Constitution that “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”.
He is also Constitutionally bound by his oath of office:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
This creates a slippery slope for any President. In other words he has no choice in acting per the Constitution lest he violate his oath and for that could be subject to impeachment.
A secondary argument, slightly less compelling, is that in his job as Commander in Chief to protect the nation against any threats could be cited here. A default that plunges the nation into another recession and costs the taxpayers hundreds of billions in additional Federal interest payments and billions more in higher credit card, mortgage and consumer loans threatens the nation as much as any war or attack does. Not acting would weaken the nation considerably and his failure to protect the nation from this sort of “attack” would also be seen as a failure to fulfill his oath.
So the 14th/PERRY V. UNITED STATES makes it clear on the debt’s validity and the fact that it cannot be abrogated in anyway that diminishes the full faith and credit of the nation and its trust with any one owed money via a statute approved by Congress, be it your mom on SS, a cleaning contractor for a federal building or foreign nations holding bonds. All are equally valid and must be honored.
So no action by Congress is illegal and the Debt Ceiling law in any dispute is trumped by the Constitution. In “Perry” Chief Justice Hughes wrote the majority opinion: “We do not so read the Constitution…the Congress has not been vested with authority to alter or destroy those obligations.”
Altering those obligations means that the terms of meeting them cannot be changed in anyway so even a default of a few days or a program to pay bills in some order with revenues is not allowed. So inaction that allows any sort of modification is out of the question as well.
If Obama does not act to avert the crisis if negotiations fail that is a more compelling reason to Impeach than trying to claim that he exceeds his Constitutional power in resolving the crisis using the 14th.
Interested Conservative| 7.7.11 @ 6:12PM
If I understand your arguments correctly, you're basically relying on the POTUS to manage the situation according to law.
Before getting to what "per the constitution" means (and Sen. Lee just explained an alternative view on that issue), why should we have any faith in how the POTUS can manage this issue? Aside from several election campaigns, has he ever managed anything? Same question for Sec. Geithner or Chairman Bernanke. Any management experience to review as to their handling of this issue?
Michael Bowler| 7.8.11 @ 5:54AM
Indeed you have hit on the real problem here. It is incumbent upon the executive branch to manage the money it has control of and pay bills as they come due. Obama has an agenda in the debt issue beyond being given carte blanche to borrow more money for current authorized expenditures.
It seems fairly clear, to those really paying attention, Mr Obama is trying to shift the nature of the US economy to a command and control centrally planned economy, the collapse of the US and it's currency from debt default would create an opportunity to do things never envisioned by most Americans. It would be necessary to blame the opposition for the debt default, language they are using already, for this to work politically.
So the question is: Will Obama ensure the debt service is met? Maybe not, if he can pin it on the republicans.
CalMark| 7.7.11 @ 6:42PM
Wow. How smart and erudite!
So the President has the authority to do things unilaterally--if it's really, really important. That means we've been wasting our time with the whole legislative process for more than two centuries. Stupid us!
You want to live in a dictatorship? Move to Cuba or Venezuela or Russia, or one of those other hell-holes. That's NOT how THIS country works.
joanne| 7.7.11 @ 7:33PM
Bravo!!!!!! This guy hates this country, and I'd be happy ro see hime with his buds in Cuba & Venezula.
He has to lose in 2012, otherwise we soon sill be those countries.
David V| 7.7.11 @ 7:24PM
@ Bentelligence| 7.7.11 @ 3:45PM
-----------------------------------------------
You have neglected to read Section 5 of the 14th Amendment.
When you have read Section 5 you'll be considerately more informed.
David V| 7.7.11 @ 7:32PM
Oops - considerably NOT considerately.
CalMark| 7.7.11 @ 7:11PM
The whole Debt Ceiling debate pits the Washington Ruling Class against the American People. And the ruling class and its sycophants/clients/hangers on/leeches are on very thin ice.
The party that mishandles this--whether it's Republicans caving or Democrats crowning Obama dictator--may very well be doomed. It is the type of debate with repercussions like those of the slavery debate that blew apart the Whigs.
DREd| 7.7.11 @ 11:47PM
In this case, absolutely not. The ruling classes will be okay if we fail to pay our debts. They'll be hurt too, but who is going to pay the real price of an economic collapse? It's not going to be wall street, it's going to be the rest of us who bear the brunt of the calamity.
beebop| 7.8.11 @ 6:00AM
Not those of us who have a job and go to it rather than sit on our hands until the first of the month waiting for WIC, SS and other forms of handouts. Those people will have a dose of cold water.
joanne| 7.7.11 @ 7:29PM
This wanna be dictator had better get a grip. I don't trust him as far as I can and would love to-throw him!! He is systematically destroying our country and I would love to find out that his sorry a** is behind the FAST AND FURIOUS program. Let's impeach this arrogant king. We HAVE to turn our country back to the super country it is.
I despise everything about him.
Michael Bowler| 7.7.11 @ 7:52PM
While I am positive he had knowledge of this program, it is doubtful we will find evidence to prove it, in fact I doubt Holder will be implicated.
Michael Bowler| 7.7.11 @ 7:48PM
The Constitution has been under assault by many presidents but never so much as this one. We are on the brink of national disaster with this man's actions. Congress has got to stand up or they may find themselves being arrested for irrelevance by a dictator who is much smarter and nastier than Hugo Chavez ever dreamed of.
weddingdress | 7.8.11 @ 4:44AM
He has to lose in 2012, otherwise we soon sill be those countries.
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