And then would be impeached and removed from office in a day or two. In handcuffs, if necessary.
You seem to think that a coup is a lot easier to bring off than it really is.
I have a lot bad to say about the Democrats, and most of it is justified. But I still have faith that most of them are not traitors to the Constitution.
My opinion of Obama as a Constitutional scholar would have dropped, if it were possible to go lower than a positive whole integer.
Regards,
Shodan
Two different functions are involved.
When the government, pursuant to an appropriation of Congress, issues a contract, it does indeed potentially incur an obligation. That’s something that must be paid – but not the complete value of the contract, just the amount incurred at the point in time that the government chooses to stop.
When Congress borrows money on the credit of the United States, it issues T-bills, which are also debts.
If Congress refuses to borrow money, then the government must, as you hint, honor any contracts which it issued.
But only a small fraction of the federal budget is correctly described that way. As an example, I mentioned the aircraft carrier construction. If Congress funded the aircraft carrier’s construction, and then refused to borrow more money, the company holding the contract would be paid its expenses thus far, but then issued a stop work order to avoid its incurring any additional expenses.
Congress never – or hardly ever – tells the Executive it must spend $X. Instead, Congress authorizes the Executive to spend UP TO $X.
The Executive can meet all legal requirements by simply not spending as much as Congress authorized.
They do their jobs quite well, you just have to know who they’re working for.
See my second paragraph of post 75.
Just because the consideration in a contract creates a liability and a method of raising funds can both relate to the concept of “debt,” doesn’t mean that your command of the English language has erased the distinction between expenditure and revenue.
In any case, the debt of the United States only consists of funds that have been expended, and does not count funds as they are obligated. To say it another way, our national debt grows only when the consideration in a contract is delivered, not when the contract is signed. Nice try, though.
There is nothing in constitutional history that regards budgeted spending as equivalent to debt instruments.
Budgeted spending also is not the same thing as accounts payable. Accounts payable is accounts payable, meaning a good or service you’ve received and still owe money for, that is different from doing something that will cost more money and/or buying something once you have no more money to buy with.
The Constitution is designed to make the legislature essentially the most powerful branch of government in theory. In practice, the prestige of the Presidency, the large Federal bureaucracy that has to enact regulations and make decisions to function day-to-day, and the huge prestige of being President has swung things very far towards the executive but legally the Congress is still the seat of most decision making and power. The executive is really there to execute the will of Congress on most issues, and to do a narrow number of things on his own initiative otherwise.
There is nothing intrinsically contradictory to any of that for Congress to pass laws that would lead to the President having to do bad things or unfortunate things or even dumb things.
Say Congress declares war. The President is responsible for waging that war, and would be expected to wage that war. Say the President tells Congress, “we do not have enough ships to get our men to the battle field, I need a resolution passed to raise the funds or to issue bonds to buy some ships to get our men to the battlefield.” Congress says no. That doesn’t mean the President gets to say, “well, they’ve already declared war, so they want me to wage it…I’ll just go ahead and issue debt to buy those boats anyway, that is what I think is best.” Is it retarded to declare war and then deny the executive the tools he needs to conduct said war? Obviously. But the constitution quite simply allows for such things.
The Constitution says Congress must approve spending before the President can spend money. The Constitution says Congress must approve taxes/revenue before the President can raise funds. And finally the Constitutions says Congress must approve debt before the President can issue debt.
What if the President, in being ordered to spend money on things, runs out of money and Congress refuses to issue new debt? Well, the President can do various things but he can’t take specific actions denied to him by the Constitution, namely he can’t say “well, in my opinion it is to the best interests of the country to issue the debt anyway.” We can whine, cry, belly-ache, laugh, joke, sneer, spit on etc that concept as much as we want, but it is simple fact, period.
What the President actually has to do if we have not enough money to spend on things we’ve budgeted and no further debt is allowed has been a subject of some debate. In the past Treasury Secretaries have said what would most likely happen is that firstly the government would continue to service the existing debt. Interest payments would continue to be made, all outstanding legal obligations such as accounts payable for things already purchased and things of that nature would be paid. Our fiscal house is not in such bad shape that even out of ongoing revenues we would be unable to fulfill those legal obligations.
After that most people suspect the government would prioritize entitlement payments, and then most everything else would simply be shut down. The Federal Government would be ran as a skeleton crew with most services shut down and non-functional, most employees would no longer be paid, most programs would be left unfunded, and etc.
I snipped most of your response, but I don’t really disagree with any of it. Obviously none of the options facing the president in the event of a failure to raise the debt ceiling are particularly attractive. It’s not even clear to me which ones are Constitutional.
OK, but how? What spending is he authorized to not spend? Can the President always refuse to spend money that Congress has ordered him to spend, or only when they subsequently fail to raise the debt limit? Isn’t allowing the President to decide which spending to enact and which to ignore also a usurpation of Congressional power?
On preview, I see you have touched on it. Although you admit that there are situations in which Congress has in fact required the executive to spend a particular amount of money - entitlement programs. If the limit is hit, and SS revenue is less than expenditures (which is the case currently, AFAIK), does the President get to decide who gets paid? Under what authority?
Example:
Congress appropriates $60,000 to cover a park ranger’s salary, $50,000 for the NEA to issue grants, and $50,000 to build a new missile detector.
The NEA issues $10,000 in grants and hires a company to build the detector; the company incurs $15,000 in expenses – and then, one month in, Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling.
What happens?
The $10,000 already issued by the NEA is gone. But the NEA can’t give any more grants. The park ranger has already been paid $12,000, but he gets laid off and doesn’t get any more salary. The company gets paid the $15,000 and is ordered to stop work.
See, the remaining grant money and the additional money for the park ranger salary, and the remaining money for the carrier are not debts.
The park ranger still gets paid for the work he did, even if his paycheck is cut after the freeze, because the work he did was complete, and the government owes him. That’s a debt.
The government does not owe him a full year of employment. That’s not a debt.
Nicely put. I thought he needed some simpler, concrete examples, but your phrase is exactly right.
In that case – which is not remotely what we’re facing, I might add, because the forced spending portion of the budget is comparatively tiny – then the Executive is truly faced with a contradictory situation.
We might as well ask, what if Congress pass two laws, simultaneously, that contradict each other. In that case, the Executive has no recourse but to flout one, or find a loophole. I’d recomend coining some $100 million coins, myself.
But currently, the Executive has more than enough money from Congress to satisfy all entitlements.
And if the total debts already add up to more than the debt ceiling allows? By the time the “deadline” in the debt ceiling debate hits, that is almost always going to be the case. Wages due for work already done, payment due on invoices already received, etc. A month out, perhaps the executive could call a halt to any new activity that costs money and is discretionary, but by the time crisis hits that would no longer be sufficient. By the time new T-bills must be issued, there’s already more money owing.
Anyways, you’ve more than illustrated that I’m correct in calling the entire situation insane. I have trouble understanding why you (collective you) put up with it.
OK, now we are getting somewhere.
But consider - the revenue doesn’t just stop. There is still some amount of money coming in, even after paying interest on the debt and other “mandatory” spending. Can the President decide to fund the NEA grants but not the park ranger and half of the missile detector? Isn’t that Congress’s job?
I see you come to the same conclusion in a later post - even without new debt we have enough money to cover mandatory spending as well as a good portion of discretionary spending. So your position is that the Executive has sole authority to determine which activities to continue and which to halt?
I’m partial to the $1T coin myself, actually. It has a nice Simpsons-esque flavor to it.
I noticed this earlier this congressional session. Really, it puts the executive in the position of having to defy Congress one way or another.
If your commanding officer gave you three contradictory orders just so he could cashier you for following orders, would it be appropriate to mutiny? Not necessarily.
In this case, though, if I were in the White House, I would make it very clear to Speaker Boehner that, put in such an impossible position, I would simply have Congress declared incompetent and start ruling by fiat. They may think they’re just setting up an impeachment; I’d give them a bloody constitutional crisis, make the issue their own apparent incompetence and probable malice, declare myself dictator with emergency powers to tax because Congress can’t or won’t do it properly, and let the chips fall where they may. I might go down hard, but I would call them on their bullshit and try to do the best for the polity until they took me down.
Again, Obama’s not going to do this; it’s not in him. That’s why they can push him like this; they figure they aren’t going to end up with a radically diminished Congress, nor their heads rolling in a river of blood on the House floor.
Fair point. That would prevent my “raise taxes as consul of the people” plan. Oh, well.
Doesn’t change the fact that Congress are sabotaging the government, and not making a secret of it.
The President would probably be obligated to do his best to fund essential services (whatever that may be), and for any appropriated funds that cannot be spend due to the absence of money, the President would probably send deferral notices to Congress under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. The process for notifying Congress of deferrals does not specifically include the justification that the treasury is empty, but hey – it is extraordinary times, and a deferral notice basically means, “We will spend this money in the future. Like, once you get your friggin’ act together, Congress.”
The President could also opt to send rescission notices to Congress, which basically state, “I don’t want to spend this money. Do you want to force me to spend the money? I’m not going to do squat with these funds for the next 45 days, after which if I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume I have to spend the money.” The President may find it useful to lob the ball of “which spending shall I prioritize?” back into Congress’ court while the entire American economy goes down in flames. Hopefully within 45 days Congress would reach some resolution on the debt limit and the proposals to rescind funds… while everyone else in the country stocks up on Krugerrands, drinking water and ammunition.
No real argument to that, is there?
No, the mandated spending is not a large fraction of the money involved.
Call it insane if you wish; I don’t strongly disagree.
I stand corrected. I thought a large majority of spending was mandated.
Going to stand by the insane assessment though.
It is problematic when Congress passes laws requiring spending, then refuses to allow the borrowing necessary for the president to obey the law. Damned if he does, and damned if he doesn’t.
Setting the debt limit at 300 or 400% of GDP, recalculated annually, would seem to settle the issue without being an absurd delegation of constitutional power.