The debt ceiling is a creation of statute, so to eliminate it would require passing a law. That takes a majority of the House of Representatives, a filibuster-proof majority of the Senate, and the President’s signature. But two additional considerations:
The Constitution lists among Congress’ enumerated powers, “to borrow money on the credit of the United States.” Congress cannot give away its enumerated power, so there will have to be some sort of mechanism for Congress to assent to the issuance of debt. It doesn’t have to be a debt ceiling.
Also, @DrDeth is correct that it would take a significant Democratic majority to jettison the debt ceiling because many, many Democrats would be loath to cast that vote. Some out of genuine concern over Congress’ role in authorizing debt, many more out of how such a vote would be demagogued by Republicans and primary opponents. Even after this latest debt limit crisis, bills to eliminate the debt ceiling only have 42 cosponsors in the House and 14 cosponsors in the Senate.
So it sounds to me like I’m going to have to put up with this phony crisis every two years whenever we have a Democratic President and a GOP House for the rest of my life.
Or you can have a parliamentary system where the government with a majority can pass its budget, each year, based on the priorities that got them voted into office.
Sure, you can make the argument that Congress has implicitly consented to the issuance of debt by authorizing levels of spending and revenues that don’t add up. But we don’t have to cover that gap through debt. We could stoke runaway inflation. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it’s an option.
The currently governing interpretation is debt obligations must be authorized explicitly. In Ye Olde Tyme they would do that authorizing as-needed in a specific manner, as another part of the regular fiscal exercise. The “debt ceiling” law was created in 1917 to create a general authorization to issue debt as the need arose w/o having to pass a new Act every time, but with the ceiling serving as the way to not surrender all power over the issuance of debt.
Reverting to having to do bond issues as part of the pay-as-you-go for each FY is an alternative, yes. But I bet there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth at Treasury about having to go back to the Hill every time there’s “unexpected” overruns or shortfalls.
Presumably under this system any program like social security that is mandatory to pay out some undefined amount of money at any time would need to be authorized for any amount of debt necessary. Or maybe a better example would be something like that but that doesn’t run a surplus.
Or you could set the debt ceiling to a gazillion dollars.
Watching Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC at the moment. He is describing this as an unmitigated, brilliant strategic victory for Biden. And also a statesmanlike maneuver, in that Biden understood that he’d be perceived as flip-flopping, but this would produce the very best deal possible for our country.
The short version: Biden’s redline (“I will not negotiate”) was always a ploy. The very act of negotiation gave McCarthy his major victory, and reporting says that at his closed-door meeting, this is how he repeatedly sold it. “I got Biden to blink! Look, I know we didn’t get much, but we were going to get nothing! I made Biden fold!”
And in the process, the GOP got very little and the Dems gave up even less. Anyway, per O’Donnell, Biden absolutely ate McCarthy’s lunch.
The problem with passing a law eliminating the debt ceiling is that one could be passed later to put it back into place. If Republicans think it’s a good idea, they’ll continue to implement it when they can. The only way out of this is to amend the constitution to let the Executive branch borrow money as needed to pay for what things Congress has authorized them to spend. Currently we might be able to get the Supreme Court to say that Congress has authorized the Executive Branch to spend when it authorizes spending in excess of revenues, but it seems to me that the way around that would be to simply say that the Executive branch doesn’t have to spend the money the Congress authorizes and if they can’t find enough funds without borrowing, then they can’t spend it. That is, unless the only money they’re spending is money that Congress requires them to spend, in which case, it would seem as though such an argument would be air-tight, but I suspect that the Executive branch has plenty of spending they are only bound to spend due to contract and not due to law. Unless there’s a law that says the Executive branch can’t break any normal contracts it enters into (it’s hard for me to keep track of what things are required for the government), in which case we have a somewhat air-tight argument, where Congress allows the Executive to enter into contracts but does not give them the means to honor them unless debt is issued.
I was raising that as a (terrible) alternative to a statutory debt ceiling. Of course, the Fed itself is authorized by statutes, so Congress could simply pass new laws charging the Fed to inflate the money supply.
Anyway, this is all getting silly. I personally believe that the Constitution requires that Congress must take some sort of explicit action to authorize debt issuance, because this is an explicitly enumerated power of Congress in the Constitution. It’s not enough to say that Congress authorized the spending that’s creating the need for debt – there are other options such as postponing that spending or inflating your way out of debt. And the 14th Amendment says that, “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law . . . shall not be questioned.” A debt ceiling crisis does not call the validity of existing debt into question – it prevents the issuance of further debt.
Of course, the Constitution also gives Congress the explicit enumerated power to declare war, which has not happened in any of the wars we’ve fought since WWII. As with the war power, the Executive probably could get away stripping this authority from a gridlocked Congress in the midst of a crisis. I don’t think that’s healthy for our democracy, but we’re in this situation because our democracy is pretty sick as it is.
Because we haven’t officially fought any wars. I assume that the Executive branch has some authority to deploy troops and undertake non-war missions against hostiles in peacetime, while going to war footing would give them vastly more power. Congress can always take away what things the Executive is allowed to do in peacetime.
We haven’t “officially fought any wars” because the Executive has repeatedly taken us to war without the Constitutionally required Congressional declaration. It’s ludicrous beyond measure to label Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan as “non-war missions against hostiles in peacetime.”
So the Rules Committee have sent it to the floor for a vote tomorrow. Massie joined 6 other Republicans, so no Dem votes were needed.
I don’t really understand the politics behind this. Given that this is Biden’s work and a bipartisan bill, I don’t know why the Dems vote against, but I read that it’s “traditional” that this Rules Committee process is never bipartisan, i.e. the Dems would normally just vote against, even if the vote on the bill itself would be bipartisan? Would the optics for the Republicans have been bad if Dems were needed in the Rules Committee? Is that why Massie was (somehow) brought into line? Was he just told that if he didn’t vote to proceed, the Dems would?
It all seems weird to me that everyone seems so nervous that a small majority of assholes can block this. I really don’t see how, if it’s only the Freedom Caucus and maybe a few Dems against it. It seems a good precedent to set to use a bipartisan vote to make the most extreme crazies irrelevant.
The crazy republicans enforce compliance among republicans by threatening a primary challenge.
Moderate republicans (such as they are) have learned they will get creamed in a primary when it seems to be nothing but MAGA voters showing up. This lesson has been proved many times. All republicans are terrified of it. So, they toe-the line with the crazies.
Not sure how fringe dems control things (if at all).
Basically. The point is that majority must “own” the decision to proceed to consider a Bill under a Rule as opposed to it being discharged for a Floor free-for-all. And not just the optics – the Freakout Caucus has already signaled that if there is not a majority within the GOP ranks in favor, they would call McCarthy on his suicide pact.
And, notevery authorization is a mandate or order to spend. That’s why they talk about discretionary vs. nondiscretionary expenses.
The potential big problem Yellen has pointed out, is that there is no constitutional or statutory mandate of prelation of payments, the US Treasury basically pays things as the invoices come due. So a decision to “use tax cash flow to first keep paying the bonds as they come due, then keep paying the DoD, Coast Guard and Air Traffic Control, CBP and Bureau of Prisons, and make everyone else sit tight” would be just pulled out their sleeves.
There are a couple reasons why the minority party on the Rules Commitee never votes for the majority’s rule on a bill (and I mean literally never – there’s no example in living memory of a minority party member voting for the majority’s rule on a bill). Firstly, most of the point of the Rules Committee is to shut down amendments and procedural tactics that the minority would otherwise employ to aid their messaging or force uncomfortable votes on the majority.
But the other reason is that the Rules Committee is one of the ultimate tools of the Speaker’s authority in the House. The majority’s partisan ratio is much higher than other committees, and the appointees are usually hand-picked allies of the Speaker. That’s why it was such a shocker for many that McCarthy agreed to hand over three of his appointments on the committee to the FC. If the Speaker cannot carry a rule through the Rules Committee, then he has been shown to be toothless.
It looks, though, like the FC is about to be shown to be a paper tiger despite all of the contretemps they raised during the Speaker race. All of the concessions they won will avail them nothing in probably the most important vote of this Congress.
Which was one of Biden’s main talking points: why should the banks and big investors get paid, but Grannie on social security can’t buy food or pay her rent?
Although I was thinking it would be pulled out of a different part of their anatomy.
I’m pretty sure this is incorrect. Discretionary spending is spending that must be reauthorized every year, whereas nondiscretionary spending is for stuff that doesn’t, such as Social Security and Medicare. Those two are entitlement programs and the government has to pay out, without any new appropriations. Military spending, foreign aid, all kinds of other stuff has to be reauthorized every year and is called discretionary.