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Invoke the 14th Amendment. PERIOD.

Posted: July 24, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Economy, Federal Budget, Federal Budget and Budget deficit | Tags: , |37 Comments

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.

The first intelligent article suggesting we do that came from The Nation‘s Katrina vanden Heuvel after Timothy Geithner suggested he had folks exploring the option.  I’ve ended several blog posts this month with the call to invoke the 14th and send the insane teabot posse back home with the message that they may want to read up on U.S. The Constitution before they start waving that Gadsden flag in our faces.

Brad Delong fleshes the argument out within this context.  We have a president that’s found lawyers who have said that actions in Libya are not “hostilities”.  I will add that we’ve had several presidents who have found lawyers that have written that “enhanced interrogation techniques” aren’t torture and that it’s okay to assassinate citizens without due process.  Certainly, with a Washington DC that has more word-parsing,  pretzel-logic-precedent-finding, triangulating lawyers per square foot than any place on the planet, the White House can find one that finds Delong’s suggestions below justifiable via Section 4 stated above.

The structure of Tim Geithner’s testimony to Congress defending his additional borrowing is:

  • The Constitution forbids me from even thinking about default.
  • You ordered me to spend.
  • A previous Congress told me not to borrow, but no Congress can bind its successors, and those of you who are in this Congress here now ordered me to spend.
  • I’m just doing what you told me to do–and what the Constitution directly and explicitly tells me to do.

And then we should move on to the people’s business. This episode of kabuki theatre has done nobody any credit. If I had previously had any respect for or confidence in Republicans, this would have shredded it. And each day it continues it further shreds my respect for and confidence in the executive branch.

DeLong argues–and I agree–that this is far better than options outlined by Ezra Klein and ranked by Calculated Risk here.  In the long run, we should probably be looking at eliminating the debt ceiling.  If Congress authorizes the spending and the President signs off on it, there should be absolutely no way that they can renege on bond holders later. Moody’s suggested the same thing last week. The rest of the crap on the table just undoes one promise made to people after another.

It should be obvious by now that Boehner is not in control of his caucus in congress. The tea party has him over a tea barrel.  These are folks that appear to have no clue about anything as illustrated by their ignorant statements last spring that all they had to do was pass a budget and it was law.  They completely forget the role of the President and the Senate. They seem to have no idea or they stubbornly refuse to believe the experts that tell them that what they are doing is basically bringing the country’s economy down.

Meanwhile, there were lingering doubts about Boehner’s ability to rally support for a debt-limit increase of any size or duration. Many House Republicans continue to push their plan to sharply cut spending over the next decade and adopt a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to balance the budget. Such a plan passed the House, but failed Friday in the Senate on a party-line vote.

Freshman Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) said Republican leaders remain concerned that even a small increase in the debt limit would fail on the House floor.

“I think their concern about bringing it to the floor is whether they can get 218 [votes] or not,” Farenthold said in an interview. “Everybody wants to only go through this pain once.”

We can’t afford to pass a debt ceiling increase attached to no firm commitments for revenue adjustments.  It’s ridiculous.  There is no way the long term budget problems will ever be solved under these conditions.  Further more, the fall out from the increased interest rates and the impact on the already nasty economy will just drive economy-related revenues down and expenditures up. We’ll exacerbate the very thing we’re trying to alleviate. This is insanity.

If the meetings today look to be more of the same, the President should just get on TV Monday morning and tell Geithner to pay the bills for the spending that the congress authorized and cite the 14th amendment. Again, if you can find a lawyer that says that enhanced interrogation techniques aren’t torture and justify claiming a citizen is an enemy combatant and can be detained indefinitely–or assassinated–without due process, rationalizing this should be easy.  Our country’s economy shouldn’t be subjected to deliberate economic sabotage because a few new congress critterz flunked their middle school American Government and History classes.

If you don’t want to take my word for it, then take former President Clinton’s suggestion. There’s also a list of lawyers there that would tell our constitutional law lecturer President that it’s constitutional.

A few days ago, former President Bill Clinton identified a constitutional escape hatch should President Obama and Congress fail to come to terms on a deficit reduction plan before the government hits its borrowing ceiling.

He pointed to an obscure provision in the 14th Amendment, saying he would unilaterally invoke it “without hesitation” to raise the debt ceiling “and force the courts to stop me.”

37 Comments on “Invoke the 14th Amendment. PERIOD.”

  1. fiscalliberal's avatar fiscalliberal says:
    July 24, 2011 at 1:56 pm

    This whole thing has just gotten out of control. This weekend, the concept of having to do something before the Asian markets opened up is being quoted. This seems to be a trigger in the thinking of Washinton and Wall Street. This was all over Andrew Ross Sorkins book “To Big to Fail” in the finacial crisis in September 2008

    I have the feeling that the Bond markets are starting to get nervous as the big sugar daddy of the United States is showing weakness. That said, Washington is out of control with political dynamics over riding rational thought. Some how the folks that passed the war cost and Medicare Part D with no funding seems to believe we do not have to pay for things.

    I have contended that we have weak political leadership in charge who have never had the discipline to have to pay for something. It has been said the bond markets will prevail. I think we are going to find out what that means.

  2. fiscalliberal's avatar fiscalliberal says:
    July 24, 2011 at 1:58 pm

    There is a very interesting article in Huff post by Jeffery Sachs:

    Budgetary Deceit and America’s Decline
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/budgetary-deceit-and-amer_b_907684.html

    In my mind it is a rational article which speaks to short and long term goas which are not in play now. It is all short term

  3. mjames's avatar mjames says:
    July 24, 2011 at 2:11 pm

    Of course, Dak, just go on as if the debt ceiling had been raised. Why not? Nobody’s organized enough to stop him – and the courts will take forever to hear the issue and probably defer anyway to executive privilege or some such other rot. As you point out, we’re already a lawless state –

    Unfortunately, you’re assuming Obama wants a sensible solution. He does not. He is wedded to the notion of his being our saviour, he who will put our country right (in more ways than one) and who will go down in history as MLK redux. Why, he’s going to fix the deficit for all time, just like he fixed all our health care woes. He’s insane. I mean it. He’s insane. Also a jackass. The next Congress can just undo whatever he does. He has no understanding of government, basic economic principles, or the suffering he is about to inflict on millions.

    I don’t buy any downgrades either. All BS, designed to force a completely unacceptable austerity on us poor peasants at the eleventh hour. If this country goes down, what’s left? The neo-feudalism Hedges talks about? Where will I get my peas?

  4. minkoffminx's avatar Minkoff Minx says:
    July 24, 2011 at 2:13 pm

    Obama won’t do it, he wants the same thing those GOPers want…and he will destroy the country to get what he wants.

    God, I wish there was some way to mutiny Obama and all the other turds in Washington…

  5. Peggy Sue's avatar Peggy Sue says:
    July 24, 2011 at 2:28 pm

    Good article by Sachs. I agree with him and I agree with Dak. The 14th Amendment solution has been sitting there from the start. You want a clean result, Mr President? Invoke it, and please don’t offer up the lame excuse that your lawyers aren’t convinced. What the hell did the lawyers say when you gave the CIA a kill order on Anwar al Awlaki? Or continued the black op detention centers, ala the Bush/Cheney gang?

    Instead, we’re threatened with proposals of a Super Congress and territorial tax schemes tucked into the GOPs wish bag for a complete corporate takeover, where corporate welfare is good and social programs for the American public are bad, even evil.

    We’re being played and what’s left of the Republic is being dismantled before our eyes.

    • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
      July 24, 2011 at 2:32 pm

      Instead, we’re threatened with proposals of a Super Congress and territorial tax schemes tucked into the GOPs wish bag for a complete corporate takeover, where corporate welfare is good and social programs for the American public are bad, even evil.

      I’m beginning to think that crashing the economy would be better than those alternatives. I think the 14th amendment invocation is the best though if he had the balls to do it. Maybe eventually Jaimie Daimon will tell him he’s gotta do it. Maybe he’s just waiting for word from the Gods of Wall Street.

      • Beata's avatar Beata says:
        July 24, 2011 at 3:10 pm

        Invoking the 14th Amendment sounds like the right solution at this point. To Obama, I would quote the 17th century proverb by George Herbert: “To him that will, ways are not wanting.” But perhaps Obama would better understand the pop-culture Nike slogan: “Just do it.”

      • JeanLouise's avatar JeanLouise says:
        July 24, 2011 at 6:01 pm

        Bill Clinton has disappointed me more than once in the past few years with his near-fawning behavior toward Obama but he’s spot on here. Clinton would have the backbone to do it, too. Obama does not.

  6. paper doll's avatar paper doll says:
    July 24, 2011 at 2:38 pm

    Boehner: GOP ready to act alone on debt deal
    WASHINGTON Scrambling to head off disaster, House Speaker John Boehner on Sunday readied a plan to prevent the first government default in U.S.

    WTF????

    • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
      July 24, 2011 at 2:44 pm

      yup. Flunking civics again. They just ignore the Senate and assume the President will cave and jackhammer the Senate into surrender.

    • Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)'s avatar Wonk the Vote says:
      July 24, 2011 at 7:56 pm

      What in the world? Between this and Super Congress, we’re living in a banana republic… Next we’ll hear about the Super Duper Congress.

  7. dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
    July 24, 2011 at 2:41 pm

    Oy. Another semi-sorry but unrepentant OBOT.

    What Were They Thinking?
    Elizabeth Drew

    Because of the extent to which the President had allowed the Republicans to set the terms of the debate, the attitude of numerous congressional Democrats toward him became increasingly sour, even disrespectful. After Obama introduced popular entitlement programs into the budget fight, a Democratic senator described the attitude of a number of his colleagues as:

    Resigned disgust at the White House: there they go again. “Mr. Halfway” keeps getting maneuvered around as Republicans move the goalposts on him.

    According to a report in The Hill newspaper in late June, the tough-minded, experienced, and blunt Democratic Representative Henry Waxman of California told Obama in a White House meeting that he’d asked several Republicans about their meeting with him the day before, and, “To a person, they said the President’s going to cave.” Then the congressman said to the President of the United States, “And if you’re going to cave, tell us right now.” The President was reported to have been displeased, and responded, “I’m the President of the United States; my words carry weight.”

  8. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    July 24, 2011 at 2:52 pm

    Another excellent post, Dak. Unfortunately, as you know and others have already commented, Obama doesn’t want a solution to this. He wants to turn all of us into serfs.

  9. apishapa's avatar apishapa says:
    July 24, 2011 at 3:20 pm

    Unfortunately, this President has no interest in doing what is right, Constitutional or imperative for this nation’s survival. He is interested in playing his kickass game of poker, chess or whatever and killing the New Deal at any cost. He doesn’t care what he should do and he isn’t going to listen to anyone who tells him what he should do, especially if they are not a Republican banker. He has been told all his life he is some kind of genius with no evidence to back it up, and he truly believes he knows more about everything than anyone else in the world.

    He is only interested in dismantling our earned and paid for insurance programs. He said so ages ago and he meant it. Nothing else will satisfy him. The economy and the nation be damned. He doesn’t care about that. Any pretense that he has any other agenda is just silly pretty pony dreams.

  10. The Rock's avatar The Rock says:
    July 24, 2011 at 3:21 pm

    Asshats.

    Hillary 2012

  11. dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
    July 24, 2011 at 3:46 pm

    From ABC News:

    Debt Crisis Update: No Deal Likely by 4 p.m.
    ABC News’ Jonathan Karl reports:

    Asian markets? They are on their own. A Republican source tells ABC News negotiators do not expect to have a deal or even the framework of a deal on the debt ceiling by 4 p.m. today, as House Speaker John Boehner had said he wanted to steady jittery Asian markets when they open.

    In fact, the source says a deal today is now looking unlikely.

    The principals are speaking over the phone while the staffs work on the numbers. Congressional Democrats and Republicans continue to try to hash out a compromise, but they are not there yet.

    Separately, the source says that the big “grand bargain” now looks, once again, to be “pretty dead” — not buried yet, but not really breathing either. Despite the positive comments by Boehner and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner this morning, the large deficit reduction plan seems to be too much, too late to accomplish by the Aug. 2 deadline.

    I dumped my money market accounts last week and moved it all to Asian pacific area bonds. Yup, I have more faith in Myanmar Generals and Cambodian Communists than I do the US congress and president. I think at this point whatever they get is going to have a negative impact on the economy and the markets. Frankly, the Ninth Ward Cookie Jar Savings bank is looking like the best damned deal on the planet these days. Too bad I can’t get my money there without the automatic IRS fee for dumping money out of a retirement account.

  12. Riverbird's avatar Riverbird says:
    July 24, 2011 at 6:43 pm

    Hendrik Hertzberg urges Obama to use the constitutional option but doesn’t think he will.

    http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2011/07/obama-blinks-debt-limit.html

  13. dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
    July 24, 2011 at 7:08 pm

    Even Larry Tribe Now Agrees: Fourteenth Amendment is a Viable Option. So Why Won’t Obama Use It?

    from Phoneix Woman at FDL

    As for whether the courts or anyone else would or could try to stop Obama should he invoke the Fourteenth, even Laurence Tribe, who is known to be close to the Obama administration — close enough to carry its water, as he blatantly did with his pronouncement earlier this month that the Fourteenth Amendment didn’t trump the debt ceiling legislation — has admitted that this is highly unlikely: “This is not a circumstance in which the courts have any plausible point of entry.” Tribe even went so far as to dismiss the threat of impeachment as “not politically a very plausible scenario.”

    So, knowing all of this, and with so much on the line — why, then, won’t President Obama admit that this is an option? Why, instead, is he pushing to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block — and getting various liberal “Veal Pen” groups to echo his call for cutting Social Security?

    Could it be it’s because he’s been planning to attack Social Security and Medicare — and whatever else is left of the New Deal and the Great Society — all along?

    Can we all just say yes to her last ‘rhetorical’ question and get it over with?

  14. Miss Ayn Thrope's avatar Miss Ayn Thrope says:
    July 24, 2011 at 7:42 pm

    It’s quite simple why Obama doesn’t invoke the Fourteenth Amendment. He doesn’t want to

    http://www.manarewescrewed.com/?p=1985

    Of course he listened to his lawyers on this. The same lawyers he disregarded going into Libya.

  15. fiscalliberal's avatar fiscalliberal says:
    July 24, 2011 at 7:46 pm

    Bloomberg – article posted at 6:20

    Boehner Moving Ahead With Short-Term Debt Plan

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-24/boehner-said-to-tell-republicans-no-deal-yet-as-obama-to-meet-pelosi-reid.html

    This could be the final roll of the dice

    At the end of the article: Obama meeting with Reid and Pelosi

    Is this being inept or just a bad call,

  16. Miss Ayn Thrope's avatar Miss Ayn Thrope says:
    July 24, 2011 at 8:21 pm

    Jack Balkin has been all over this for a while. Most recently:

    http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/07/imaginative-constitutional-histories.html

    And the link above cites Eric (Me Loves Exec Power) Posner and “necessities of state.” That’s a slippery slope.

  17. northwestrain's avatar northwestrain says:
    July 24, 2011 at 8:57 pm

    Wonk — yep I agree — lack of empathy — or just plain old narcissist.

    Or this works:

    “when you couldn’t rely on morality, you could absolutely bank on narcissism: It made the bastard utterly predictable. “ J.R. Ward

    That fits 0bowma to a “T”

    I found that quote somewhere and then googled to see who wrote it.

  18. fiscalliberal's avatar fiscalliberal says:
    July 24, 2011 at 9:12 pm

    Interestering New Orleans story

    At 100, Still Keeping Time as the Leader of the Band

  19. JUDY WIMBER's avatar JUDY WIMBER says:
    July 28, 2011 at 5:48 pm

    INVOKE THE 14TH AMENDMENT!
    PERIOD!

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