Invoke the 14th Amendment. PERIOD.

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.”