If a tree is felled illegally in the forest, and the only people there to hear it are the repulsive, hypocritical leftist sycophants and enablers of the imperial President who ordered the tree be cut down in the first place, does it make a sound?
And if so, does it sound like the muffled screams of a Constitution being smothered in its sleep with pillows by Ezra Klein, Dick Stengel, and Fareed Zakaria?
Conn Carroll, Washington Examiner:
At a May 25th public event, Geithner pulled a copy of the U.S. Constitution from his pocket and read from section Four of the 14th amendment: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for the payments of pension and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion — this is the important thing — shall not be questioned.”
What Geithner appeared to be arguing, and what many on the left are now arguing, is that the debt limit, passed as part of the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917, violates the 14th amendment’s prohibition against congressional legislation repudiating the nation’s debts.
On the legal merits, Geithner’s theory is absolutely absurd. In 1935, the Supreme Court held in Perry v United States, that section Four of the 14th amendment applied only to payments for debts incurred “by virtue of the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States.” In other words, while the federal government is required to pay its creditors, it is in no way constitutionally required to carry out other spending.
And the Treasury Department has more than enough cash to pay our creditors. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, while the Treasury Department will take in $172.4 billion in revenues this August, they only have to pay out $29 billion worth of interest payments on Treasury securities. That leaves more than enough money to also pay active-duty troops, veterans, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Almost all other federal government spending, however, would cease.
But what if President Obama ordered Geithner to sell enough Treasury bonds to cover the rest of the government’s scheduled spending? Who could sue to stop him? And would the courts have the courage to say no?
The first hurdle would be identifying someone with standing to sue Geithner in federal court. To press any claim in court, a plaintiff must first show sufficient connection to, and harm from, the action being challenged. A general worry about the threat deficit spending poses would not be enough.
Someone who invested in a bond fund that bet against U.S. Treasury bonds, as Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., reportedly has done, might qualify if he could prove Geithner’s illegal bond sale caused him to lose money. A Treasury employee who refused to follow Geithner’s order to sell the debt, and was then sanctioned, might also qualify.
But even if standing was met, courts have been reluctant to assert themselves against this administration on economic matters. Legal scholars agree that the Treasury-led restructuring of Chrysler’s debt in bankruptcy was illegal. But despite the fact that some Indiana pension funds were able to prove harm (they lost billions), the Supreme Court declined to review the merits of the case after then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan argued “As an economic matter … blocking the transaction would undoubtedly have grave consequences.”
The economic consequences of the debt limit are far greater than the Chrysler bail out. Geithner got away with breaking the law the first time, there is every reason to believe he will get away with it again.
The Constitution was intended to give the federal government unlimited power.
And by “intended”, I mean of course, has been steadily “read” that way, as a function of a particularly incoherent (but popularized and institutionalized leftist hermeneutic ploy, first favored by the agrarians and the New Critics here in this country, before later being more thoroughly rationalized by the post structuralists) idea of how language, and so interpretation, properly functions.
That is to say, through interpretive and linguistic hubris, ignorance, and arrogance, we’ve allowed the Constitution to be completely deconstructed to the point we’re now seeing arguments that it not only allows for huge expansions of federal powers, but by way of court decision and various precedent, practically requires it!
— Which, I have to say, I find it sad and a bit surreal watching all this unfold (as it inevitably must, given the kernel linguistic assumptions accepted), then watching the conservative textualists trying to argue the ground organ meat they helped prepare for us back into the Constitutional haggis.
If no one has standing to press for the obeyance of the Constitution, then there is no point in having a Constitution.
In other news, some wag has a Twitter feed that functions only to tell celebs to shut up.
Love it.
But even if standing was met, courts have been reluctant to assert themselves against this administration on economic matters. Legal scholars agree that the Treasury-led restructuring of Chrysler’s debt in bankruptcy was illegal.
This is how they get you, isn’t it? Once you’re complicit in the first crime, they can hold that over your head as they commit still more, and what are you going to do about it? Get righteous all of the sudden?
What are you going to do, impeach him or his boss? You can’t tell me there aren’t enough states who will send Copperheads and RINOs to keep 34 no votes on impeachment for the foreseeable future?
I hope these chronicles survive, so that future generations may see where it all went off the rails.
“Buy my new improved T-Bill backed by the full faith in me and all the credit I can steal for selling them to you suckers*.”
* More born every minute if not aborted first.
this is what happens when you put a raised-on-food-stamps ghetto trash pothead in your white house
bumblefuck always wants special exceptions to be made for him – whether it’s his incessant and whorish golfing or his endless vacations or ramming his dirty socialist rape of our health cares through using reconciliation
it’d just how he rolls
*it’s* just how he rolls I mean sorry I have crazy delicious King’s Hawaiian bacon fried rice in front of me what was left over from little A’s first bd party
David Brooks proves “projection” is not just for the Progressive-socialists anymore and shows everyone that he is himself a “No-Brainer.”
“3 to 1” = “trillions” to “a few hundred million.” Math, it’s not for the “No-Brainer[s].”
Where the force of words is insufficient to rein in the Obamites; where force of will is not enough to limit the damage of their policies; where truth is overpowered by lies and spin; where all else fails, the Gods of the Copybook Headings pop up and remind everyone that arithmetic will have its way, and that while Geithner may “get away with it” politically, he won’t get away with it when the money runs out. And it is running out, as everybody knows, loath though they may be to admit it.
I just wish the Gods of the Copybook Headings weren’t so damn indiscriminate when it came to setting things to rights. Ah, well — at least they favor the well prepared.
#10 was a direct quote from the Brooks article which has now been changed.
Which means instead of being wrong by a factor of 2000 to 4000 he now is down to a factor of 2 to 4. Good enough for NYT work I suppose. Now if Republicans can get a ratio of spending cuts to tax increases of 6,000 or 12,000 to 1 as Brooks originally had it they would be dumb not to jump at it as long as they do “trust but verify”.