{"id":5495,"date":"2011-07-31T00:39:45","date_gmt":"2011-07-31T07:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5495"},"modified":"2011-07-31T00:39:45","modified_gmt":"2011-07-31T07:39:45","slug":"a-constitutional-option","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/31\/a-constitutional-option\/","title":{"rendered":"A Constitutional Option?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Republican criminal blackmail of America continues to push us to the edge, only two days out from the deadline, Democrats from across the political spectrum are calling on Barack Obama to invoke a Constitutional option, because the 14th Amendment contradicts the existence of a debt ceiling.  That option could be hugely problematic, depending on how Obama were to carry it out.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"constitution\"House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) may not be pushing the issue publicly, but in private she "clearly" supports President Barack Obama using the Constitution to raise the debt ceiling as a last resort, according to one Democratic member of Congress.<\/p>\n

"Nancy clearly wants it<\/strong>," said the lawmaker, who requested anonymity. "Publicly? No. Privately? She thinks the president should do it. Period."<\/p>\n

Several top Democrats have endorsed the idea in recent days as an eleventh hour solution: House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) backed the option on Wednesday, and House Democratic Caucus chairman John Larson (D-Conn.) and Assistant Minority Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.) emerged from a Monday Caucus meeting announcing their support for the idea as well<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

But Pelosi, the highest-ranking House Democrat, has been mum. One possible reason is that she has to preserve the image that Congress will reach a deal before the situation even gets to that point.<\/p>\n

The provision at the heart of the constitutional debate, Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, states: \u201cThe validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payments of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.\u201d Essentially, Democrats are arguing that since the "public debt" cannot be questioned, then the debt ceiling itself is unconstitutional<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Huffington Post<\/a>><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the problem.  The Constitution places the determination of what is or is not Constitutional in the Supreme Court\u2019s purview.  Then the courts are responsible for providing court orders to the Executive branch to enforce court rulings.  No court has ruled on this issue.  So to correctly base action on the 14th, Obama would have to file for a court order to raise the debt ceiling.  Whatever the federal court decided would be appealed by the losing side to the Court of Appeals, and their decision, to the Supreme Court.  God only knows what the five fascist SCROTUS Injustices might decide.  However, there is another way.<\/font><\/p>\n

Obama could wait until we reach a state of emergency, and use the 14th as the rationale for issuing an executive order to the Treasury Department to ignore the debt ceiling, under the doctrine that the President has extraordinary powers to safeguard the nation in times of emergency.<\/font><\/p>\n

It is clear that Obama does not want to do either, and I understand why.  For many days I have struggled to find articles on other subjects, but the Republican hostage crisis has sucked all the oxygen out of the room.  This single issue has prevented government from working on anything else.  Interpret that as JOBS!  Obama wants this issue behind him until 2013.  If Obama does opt for a Constitutional solution, it will invoke a Constitutional crisis, likely leading to an impeachment attempt.  This would result in more weeks or months with the nation\u2019s business playing second fiddle to Republican scheming.  That is what Republicans want.  That is what Obama wants to avoid.<\/font><\/p>\n

We may well see Republicans strut up to their microphones on August 3 to say. \u201cSee? The sky didn\u2019t fall after all.\u201d  If so, they will be lying.  Forces will have been set in motion, but the consequences take a while to arrive.  If Republicans cause default, it is imperative  that Obama invoke a Constitutional option the second consequences are evident, if not before.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Republican criminal blackmail of America continues to push us to the edge, only two days out from the deadline, Democrats from across the political spectrum are calling on Barack Obama to invoke a Constitutional option, because the 14th Amendment contradicts the existence of a debt ceiling.  That option could be hugely problematic, depending on […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}