OK, suppose the deal hadn’t gone through, and the President really was presented with a debt ceiling crisis: What are his options? The way I see it, either the President ignores the ceiling, or we have the largest executive power grab in this nation’s history. Because that would mean that the Executive must pick and choose which government programs get the limited funding allowed under the ceiling. He could, in effect, take this country in very nearly any direction he chose, with no checks from the other two branches whatsoever. He could, for instance, dump all of the funding cuts on the military, and fund everything else in the budget at 100%. He could selectively kill projects in the home districts of representatives that he doesn’t like. He’d be halfway to being an absolute dictator.
And, honestly, I think that this is exactly the outcome that a significant chunk of the right wing wants. They want an absolute dictator. They don’t actually care what policies are implemented, so long as they’re implemented by a strong leader. This is why the Right is so big on Putin. And this is why (at least, one reason why) they hate Obama so much: Because he’s not trying to grab all of the power for himself, like they think a leader ought to.
Eh, issuing debt would probably be the least constitutionally plausible thing he could do, without approval. While he can make some “extraordinary moves” shuffling money around to keep the bills paid for a time, the truth is he would eventually have to default on the debt. It’s really that simple. You’re starting with the assumption the constitution doesn’t allow the Congress to drive the car over a cliff, but in fact it does.
There are really two options the President would have:
Simply allow the Treasury to continue to collect revenue and pay expenses on a first-come first-serve basis. This would result in many obligations not being paid consistently, Social Security checks, salaries, interest payments etc. There isn’t really a legal problem with doing this, it will just show that the United States has fallen into a dysfunctional state.
He could shut the government down, discontinue employee salaries and things that aren’t required constitutionally (like social security obligations, which are a creature of statute, but aren’t legally debt) and prioritize revenues to paying interest on the debt.
There’s no good option. But the assumption cannot be that if the Congress creates a “no win scenario” it just constitutionally allows the President to do things that the constitution very explicitly says only the Congress can do (like issue new debt.) This isn’t the German Empire under Bismarck (who had the legal authority to simply operate the government by fiat without a budget when the Imperial Diet refused to pass one.) Maybe we should have a provision like that in exigent circumstances, but we do not, and there is no precedent for it in our system.
There is precedent for shutting the government down or the President notifying Congress that there isn’t enough money available to fund budgeted activities, and that would be the option the President would have to follow.
No, you’ve got it exactly wrong. The check on the President making all these decisions is for Congress to exercise its constitutional power (and duty) to borrow on the credit of the United States. All spending goes forward the way Congress wanted it to, problem solved.
What you’re describing is a teenager not cleaning up one’s room, and then complaining they have to live in a mess. (With Congress being the teenager in this example.)
I said that if we have a debt ceiling crisis, then Congress is handing the President a huge amount of power. The fact that Congress can prevent that by not having a debt ceiling crisis in no way refutes what I said.
You said there’s no check on the President’s power if such a case arose. That’s not true. Congress can authorize more debt.
As a general rule, checks and balances aren’t always about preventing one branch from doing something, often it is about having recourse to correct things that have gone wrong. Congress can’t prevent the President from breaking the law, but it can impeach him for doing so.
In this case, Congress has two checks on a President running amok in the way you suggest. Either authorize the debt before a crisis occurs, or authorize the debt in the middle of the crisis to end the power grab of how the public purse is spent.
I don’t think I agree. There’s enough money still coming in to cover the debt and interest payments. There just isn’t enough money coming in to cover that, plus general spending authorized by law. I would imagine that if the President can’t - under the Constitution - issue new debt, and he can’t default on existing debt, but he can opt not to allocate funds to other general spending (see post #39), then he must opt not to allocate funds to other general spending. Chronos’s post is simply an observation that once you accept that logic, both the Constitution and statute are silent on which general spending he can choose not to allocate funds to, giving him enormous power.
Apparently, the problem with this scenario is that the Treasury isn’t currently equipped to pick among bills to pay; their system just pays them as they come in. So the President isn’t able to prioritize who gets paid first. No doubt Treasury could develop that ability, but the current administration doesn’t seem interested in doing so.