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.
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.
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.
GovTrack.us
Patrick McLaughlin