As the United States heads toward running out of cash in a few weeks, here's a reminder how this happened:
* The law says what tax rates are, determining revenue.
* Each year laws are enacted that direct money to be spent a certain way.
* Existing debt has to be serviced (e.g. bonds).
* An older law limits national debt.
* Republicans drove up the debt during the Trump Admin (tax cuts, airline bailouts, etc) so that the limit is about to be reached.
The laws are logically incompatible.
@silverhorseman Having the lawyers sign off on something unconventional is potentially one of those procedural steps. Biden can say it, but then someone has to do it, and those someones have government lawyers who have to have a basis for thinking it's legal.
I could imagine that minting a trillion dollar coin might also have some administrative procedures that have to be completed first per existing statutes.
@GovTrack which is why the #DebtCeiling bs. needs to be #abolished since no other nation does this and it's not as if the Government can nilly-willy spend more or less than what the legislators enacted.
Or the world needs to stop lending money to the #USA until they #AbolishDebtCeiling for good...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIbkoop4AYE
Blog: Don't Read The News https://cgpgrey.substack.com/p/why-tv-news-is-a-waste-of-human-effort* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVJXRq7IfgQ&list=PLc5PfsIwcLC...
But the constitutional obligation (his, Congress’s, SCOTUS’s, all of them…) not to put the debt in question—not to default—overrides all laws about debt. Because constitution.
So when Congress fails to pass a bill permitting that, it’s still obligatory, and the debt ceiling law becomes effectively an unconstitutional constraint on the obligation to see the debt serviced and the budgetary obligations (a passed by Congress and signed into law) fulfilled.
@GovTrack
The law *cannot* force a condition the Constitution forbids. (This isn’t debatable, the history of that clause makes it very explicit that the debt may not be impaired or abandoned.)
So if/when that moment comes and there’s a conflict between law and constitution, the law loses.
We didn’t need a debt limit (only the US and Denmark have it; they don’t use it this way). There’s no crisis if/when it’s gone. Debt gets issued if needed, but the budget defines what *can* be spent.
And no, it’s *not* like those things. The Exec *has* the power already to issue debt. But doesn’t have authority to spend however it pleases — the budget constrains that already. And it’s how we functioned until the debt limit was created.
No crisis then. Wouldn’t be now.
@McPatrick
No one is questioning the validity of the public debt, which is not some fancy way of saying default. The question isn't "is the debt valid," but "should we issue more debt?" The 14th says nothing on this.
Even so, section 5 follows, empowering Congress, not the President, in carrying out the forgoing sections.
An even older law says: "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."
So, there's that.
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