Just when I was beginning to feel a twinge of pity for Sir John of Orange, he goes and says this: "If the President signs it, the 'crisis' atmosphere he has created will simply disappear." Pity? No. Screw him.
Here's why I had what I now can't even bring myself to call a twinge of pity. John Boehner believes he is representing the "other" party. In fact, he just represents the Republicans. The old Party of Lincoln. The Tea Party, as far as the debt limit ceiling is concerned, is an actual third party. Boehner, poor Boehner. Nah, screw him.
If Michele Bachmann is the de facto head of the teabaggers, and she has promised not to vote for an increase in the debt limit, we are on course for a train wreck on August 2. So many pledges, so little time.
More and more I'm beginning to agree with what President Clinton said, about invoking the 14th Amendment "without hesitation, and force the courts to stop me."
I think that's the only way to go. Boehner has Eric "I should have been a" Kantor yipping at his heels, checking his pulse, waiting for the tanning booth to get stuck on bronze. Boehner's omnipotence has all but gone away. But, Boehner has been having things his own way for too long. When the GOP was regaining the House last year, his battle cry was "Jobs, jobs, jobs." Since the teabaggers were sworn in, the "GOP" has not proposed a single works program. And now he's truly stuck between a rock and a hard place. Invoking the 14th would actually take a little pressure off Boehner.
The 14th Amendment was signed into law on June 13, 1866, and signed into law by President Andrew Johnson, as part of Reconstruction. The Section that President Clinton is referring to is #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.
President Clinton said, "I think the Constitution is clear and I think this idea that the Congress gets to vote twice on whether to pay for [expenditures] it has appropriated is crazy.” Increasing the ceiling “is necessary to pay for appropriations already made, so you can’t say, ‘Well, we won the last election and we didn’t vote for some of that stuff, so we’re going to throw the whole country’s credit into arrears."
Congress was given the sole power to borrow money on the credit of the United States. Alexander Hamilton, as the first Secretary of the Treasury, believed that the best way to build credit was to go in debt. Article I Section 8 of the United States Constitution gave Congress the sole power to borrow money on the credit of the United States. Until 1917, when the Second Liberty Bond Act was signed into law to fund World War I, Congress had to vote yay or nay on every spending bill. The Act set established an aggregate limit, or "ceiling," on the total amount of bonds that could be issued. Initially, the limit was $17 million.
Writing in The Christian Science Monitor in 2010, Gail Russell Chaddock explained this complicated economic info: With the passage of Public Debt Acts in 1939 and 1941, Treasury was authorized by Congress to issue such debt as was needed to fund government operations (as authorized by each federal budget) as long as the total debt (excepting some small special classes) does not exceed a stated ceiling. Since 1979 the House of Representatives by rule has automatically raised the debt ceiling when passing a budget, except when the House votes to waive or repeal this rule.
Or, if they want to get into a pissing contest with the president, or a staredown with the rest of the freaking world. What the teabaggers are incapable of understanding is one simple fact: If America defaults, the ripples will spread around the world thisquick. You think things were bad when Shrub was so distracted by fighting two wars that he let us slip to the brink of financial disaster? Try multiplying that by the approximately 192 countries in the world. The teabaggers have no world view, no clue about how to govern. All they know is
jingoistic stuff they can put on a placard.
And, here's the cool thing about the 14th:
Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Yep. This is the same amendment that the right has tried to use to push immigration reform.
No comments:
Post a Comment