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So you're a lawyer, right? Politically I get what you're saying but legally, with the 14th amendment and all, he has to either illegally prioritize or illegall

by jbooth 13y ago

So you're a lawyer, right? Politically I get what you're saying but legally, with the 14th amendment and all, he has to either illegally prioritize or illegally ignore the debt limit. Maybe ignoring the debt limit has more constitutional standing than reprioritizing the congressional budget. No idea on my end. Personally, if we're prioritizing, I think he should do some math where they pay all treasury bonds, on time and 100%, and then just cut every other expenditure in half (or whichever % works out), across the board. Social security checks, contractor payments, gov't worker payments, etc. Anybody refuses to do work, send the half-paid national guard after them and order them, since we're in crazytown anyways. And tell them to write their congressman. That's possibly the "least illegal" option, and certainly the most politically palatable, as far as respecting congress's self-contradictory legal orders in this mess.

rayiner 13y ago
The fact that the 14th amendment prohibits reneging on the public debt does not mean that the President is empowered to ignore the other provisions of the Constitution in order to avert a Constitutional breach by Congress. Section V of the 14th amendment clearly gives Congress the power to enforce the other provisions of the amendment. See: http://www.volokh.com/2013/10/03/14th-amendment-option-table http://www.volokh.com/2013/10/03/14th-amendment-option-table. As for the illegality of prioritizing payments, as far as I can tell, out of the mandatory expenditures only a small amount is Constitutionally required (specifically, judges' salaries). The rest is only statutorily mandatory. As you correctly perceive, it seems preferable to commit a statutory violation to avoid a Constitutional one.
waps 13y ago
Believe it or not, lawyers deal with conflicting laws all the time. There's a few general principles, the most important "rule of thumb" is : Constitution trumps amendments (but only in certain high-up courts), which trumps normal law, which trumps contracts (written "generally" before oral ones), which trumps common sense ("what a good house father would do"). The sum total of all these things form "the law" as viewed from the perspective of a person (so yes, you are legally obligated to "generally be good" even when the law doesn't explicitly require it (e.g. help people involved in accidents)) Basically since the government debt obligations are contracts, while the debt ceiling is a law, Obama has no choice in the matter : any lawful payments (like medicare, ...) have to be fulfilled before any contract is paid. So barring a new law (the "agreement" the news talks about), on Okt 17, the US should default. Maybe Obama can delay it a few days, but certainly no more. Please note that congress is doing exactly what it was designed to do. Congress, whether you agree with it or not, represents the will of the people of the united states and Obama is ignoring it, refusing to do so much as negotiate (or so claims congress, and I see no reason to doubt their claims). He knew years in advance that this was coming and gambled. Every executive who has fought congress on this has failed, again something Obama is perfectly aware of (it featured prominently in his education for one thing, hell, it's one of the main forces that brought us democracy in the first place). In case someone doesn't know this : Obama's a lawyer. Lawyers tend to be lawyers first, people second. And he has a history of this sort of thing : expect him to follow the law over common sense.
- AlexMax 13y ago
  > Please note that congress is doing exactly what it was designed to do. Congress, whether you agree with it or not, represents the will of the people of the united states and Obama is ignoring it, refusing to do so much as negotiate (or so claims congress, and I see no reason to doubt their claims). He knew years in advance that this was coming and gambled. Every executive who has fought congress on this has failed, again something Obama is perfectly aware of (it featured prominently in his education for one thing, hell, it's one of the main forces that brought us democracy in the first place). The Affordable Care Act was passed through normal legislative processes and defended by the judicial system. It has also survived an almost constant legislative assault since then. Shutting down the government and threatening default over a piece of legislation you don't like is not part of the normal legislative process. It's radical. And you can even argue that with cute little last minute rule changes like HR 368 that it's borderline undemocratic as well. The American people may have mixed opinions on the Affordable Care Act, but I highly doubt they wanted the federal government shut down over it.
- aboodman 13y ago
  Congress is not doing what it was 'designed' to do. The Hastert Rule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_Rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_Rule) was only introduced in the last 30 years or so, and has never been followed as dogmatically as Boehner is following it now. By refusing to bring a bill to a vote unless a majority of his party openly supports it, Boehner is explicitly preventing compromise.
  - waps 13y ago
    That's not what I mean. Congress is refusing to finance a government whose actions it doesn't support. Which is exactly what it's supposed to do, and is in fact one of it's core functions. The power of the purse is allocated to the house.
    - polymatter 13y ago
      Boehner is refusing to allow Congress a vote to finance the government. This is not the same as Congress refusing to finance the government.
digikata 13y ago
I'm thinking that looking at this Constitutional conflict is a lot like when you know you're about to execute latent untested paths in your production codebase. Except that, of course, you're not just crashing a webserver in this case...

by jbooth 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

The fact that the 14th amendment prohibits reneging on the public debt does not mean that the President is empowered to ignore the other provisions of the Constitution in order to avert a Constitutional breach by Congress. Section V of the 14th amendment clearly gives Congress the power to enforce the other provisions of the amendment. See: http://www.volokh.com/2013/10/03/14th-amendment-option-table http://www.volokh.com/2013/10/03/14th-amendment-option-table. As for the illegality of prioritizing payments, as far as I can tell, out of the mandatory expenditures only a small amount is Constitutionally required (specifically, judges' salaries). The rest is only statutorily mandatory. As you correctly perceive, it seems preferable to commit a statutory violation to avoid a Constitutional one.

waps 13y ago

Believe it or not, lawyers deal with conflicting laws all the time. There's a few general principles, the most important "rule of thumb" is : Constitution trumps amendments (but only in certain high-up courts), which trumps normal law, which trumps contracts (written "generally" before oral ones), which trumps common sense ("what a good house father would do"). The sum total of all these things form "the law" as viewed from the perspective of a person (so yes, you are legally obligated to "generally be good" even when the law doesn't explicitly require it (e.g. help people involved in accidents)) Basically since the government debt obligations are contracts, while the debt ceiling is a law, Obama has no choice in the matter : any lawful payments (like medicare, ...) have to be fulfilled before any contract is paid. So barring a new law (the "agreement" the news talks about), on Okt 17, the US should default. Maybe Obama can delay it a few days, but certainly no more. Please note that congress is doing exactly what it was designed to do. Congress, whether you agree with it or not, represents the will of the people of the united states and Obama is ignoring it, refusing to do so much as negotiate (or so claims congress, and I see no reason to doubt their claims). He knew years in advance that this was coming and gambled. Every executive who has fought congress on this has failed, again something Obama is perfectly aware of (it featured prominently in his education for one thing, hell, it's one of the main forces that brought us democracy in the first place). In case someone doesn't know this : Obama's a lawyer. Lawyers tend to be lawyers first, people second. And he has a history of this sort of thing : expect him to follow the law over common sense.

AlexMax 13y ago
> Please note that congress is doing exactly what it was designed to do. Congress, whether you agree with it or not, represents the will of the people of the united states and Obama is ignoring it, refusing to do so much as negotiate (or so claims congress, and I see no reason to doubt their claims). He knew years in advance that this was coming and gambled. Every executive who has fought congress on this has failed, again something Obama is perfectly aware of (it featured prominently in his education for one thing, hell, it's one of the main forces that brought us democracy in the first place). The Affordable Care Act was passed through normal legislative processes and defended by the judicial system. It has also survived an almost constant legislative assault since then. Shutting down the government and threatening default over a piece of legislation you don't like is not part of the normal legislative process. It's radical. And you can even argue that with cute little last minute rule changes like HR 368 that it's borderline undemocratic as well. The American people may have mixed opinions on the Affordable Care Act, but I highly doubt they wanted the federal government shut down over it.
aboodman 13y ago
Congress is not doing what it was 'designed' to do. The Hastert Rule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_Rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastert_Rule) was only introduced in the last 30 years or so, and has never been followed as dogmatically as Boehner is following it now. By refusing to bring a bill to a vote unless a majority of his party openly supports it, Boehner is explicitly preventing compromise.
- waps 13y ago
  That's not what I mean. Congress is refusing to finance a government whose actions it doesn't support. Which is exactly what it's supposed to do, and is in fact one of it's core functions. The power of the purse is allocated to the house.
  - polymatter 13y ago
    Boehner is refusing to allow Congress a vote to finance the government. This is not the same as Congress refusing to finance the government.

digikata 13y ago

I'm thinking that looking at this Constitutional conflict is a lot like when you know you're about to execute latent untested paths in your production codebase. Except that, of course, you're not just crashing a webserver in this case...