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If Congress creates a catch-22 forcing the President to break the law, they should say which law should be chosen & why
The laws surrounding the federal debt limit are logically inconsistent, the legislative equivalent of “this sentence is a lie.” If we assume the trillion dollar platinum coin solution or moral obligation coupons are not viable, what Congress has done with the debt limit in conjunction with other laws is to force the executive branch into breaking the law. It has made it logically impossible for the President to dutifully follow all of the laws still in effect.
Several laws passed by Congress require the executive branch to give different entities money at specific times. Congress has also set a borrowing limit which would theoretically prevent the executive branch from getting the money it is still legally required to give out. There is basically nothing in the relevant legislation regarding how to deal with this conflict, and the President literally can’t do both. He must break some laws, and the question then becomes which laws should he break.
The President could ignore just the debt limit law and continue to fulfill all the spending laws. Or, the President could fulfill the debt limit law, but that would require ignoring multiple other laws which would force the President to randomly pick who does and does not get paid.
I think everyone involved in this potentially enormous and important fight — including the President, the Treasury Secretary, Speaker John Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, etc. — should be forced to answer this simple question: If Congress creates a legalistic catch-22 that forces the government to break its own laws, which law do they think should be broken, and why does that one takes precedence?
I would love to hear individuals threatening not to raise the debt limit have to explain why that law must be followed, but the President must break other contradictory laws to do so. I’m very interested in hearing, for example, the legal reasoning behind why Wall Street bond holders should still be paid while doctors, FBI agents and seniors should be stiffed.
It is amazing that we are on the precipice of an incredibly important policy event and those involved haven’t even been made to explain what they legally think is at stake, and why.
Photo by Barack Obama under Creative Commons license
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“. . .What Laws Should the President Break Regarding the Debt Limit?. . .”
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How about every one of ‘em? But which laws are they, and who says so?
This is at least as much a political conundrum as a legal one. Probably much moreso, since the Dems control the Senate. That’s a worthy firewall.
The armchair legalisms should pale compared with a platinum coin’s political and economic consequences. In the end those two are the constraint. It would still be a guess, though, what those would actually be.
Congress is simply saying they approved too much shit. So take your pick and stop spending. We don’t give a shit. That’s not our job. We decide what to pay and we just said, don’t pay. It’s in the constitution. We must approve all spending and so we revoked it. What’s wrong with you silly liberals?
Dear Mr. President, Don’t be like a “young bull” and rush downhill to break one of the laws. Be an old bull, take your time and break ALL of the laws. Go for the record Barack! It’s your birthday!
It doesn’t matter. Government accounting doesn’t even account for the destruction of our life sustaining planet.
“. . .What Laws Should the President Break Regarding the Debt Limit?. . .”
Pick your poison.
Can’t we just send some of the shit back????
Did I read things wrong?? Haven’t we been through this like 17 times before????
Jon, you are wise beyond your years. 537 elected officials in Washington don’t have a friggin’ clue and apparently haven’t for some 30 years on this “debt ceiling”. Why is is JUST NOW a crisis and never before??????
Because the Rs say so. And because a Dem is president and he’s blah.
Bit is the President the President? Have we even had a President since, oh maybe the days of Jimmy Carter.
Remember how Richard Nixon, certainly not a President known at the time for his “liberal-ness” dealt with a minor cycle of inflation? He issued various orders, and basically ONE OF THOSE involved the fact that Companies had to roll back their prices, the summer of 1972. I know all about that activity – I spent that summer helping the insurance firm I worked for comply.
Now we have people in the Oval Office who apparently have vowed to support whatever agenda most hurts the middle class. So we have had NAFTA, CAFTA, and soon the Trans Pacific Plan. As well as this RW assault on the citizens’ safety net, via thee “budget deficit” bits of legislation. And remember – a commission Nixon had appointed surveyed the nation’s landscape, both its political and economic landscape, and stated that without a safety net, the poorer areas of America’s Big Cities would erupt in riots. Now no one at the top cares about any of that – I guess the weaponry, drones and militias we have, including the very militarized local police, can handle any such assaults.
A: All of them. The debt ceiling is not an actual, constitutional thing.
Good idea. Lets return all the military stuff, like drones and such for a credit.That ought to do it. Better than the trillion dollar coin idea.
its drones you know. Drones.
The one thing that is certain is that Jon Walker is taking these questions more seriously on their own terms than any Rpeublicans in Congress are. Which is a mistake, by the way.
If the PCS option 31USC5112(k) is constitutional, which I believe it is, then so is the debt limit 31USC3101(b), which Obama agreed to and signed into law in August 2011. That’s so, because the PCS option provides an alternative to default on U.S. debt. That means that the 14th Amendment option would involve willfully violating a perfectly constitutional federal statute, 31USC3101(b).
And here are the current headlines at HuffPo:
Per Matt Yglesias: