How the Debt Ceiling Almost Gave Us the All Powerful President… Kind Of
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- Category: Bryan Vinson
- Published on Wednesday, 03 August 2011 11:46
- Written by Bryan Vinson
The debt ceiling debate was a tough segment for American politics. One side tried to use it to force taxes to be raised on the wealthiest two percent of Americans. The other side tries to use it to use it to force deep cuts of spending in Washington DC. In the end, the ceiling was raised, taxes were not, and the deep cuts never materialized. It was a wash. However, the left had a chance to feel around for a possibility that would have been the brightest silver lining in the whole debacle. The power of the President to raise the debt limit on his own without authority from congress. It was tempting enough that an actual former President, Bill Clinton, encouraged President Barack Obama to go ahead and do it and let the courts try to catch up with him. He said that this out loud and in public.
It all boiled down to the constitution, which liberals will happily quote from when it suites, (otherwise it is an outdated document with no relevance to today’s world) and it’s provision in the 14th amendment that states the validity of the public debt shall not be questioned. Interpretations of the constitution can arise in very vague readings. When liberals see this, they see – “The President has the authority to raise the debt ceiling.” Keep in mind that the 14th amendment includes no mention of “President”, “authority”, and “borrowing.” You can debate what it means, but no one, including an actual former President, should read it as that. Maybe it’s the same mentality that caused liberals to read “provide for the general welfare” as granting the government power to redistribute wealth in social programs. (This isn’t listed in the ACTUAL list of powers for congress.)
The constitution specifically grants congress the power to levy taxes and borrow money. It also states that money can’t be removed from the treasury except by law. It is very specific about this. The section describing the powers of the President makes no mention of usurping the powers of borrowing money if congress can’t get its act together. If any President would have found that he or she could, in fact, borrow on their own authority, it would have been Barack Obama. The fact that he didn’t is telling that the validity of such an argument is non existent. This is after all the President that decided to effectively become the CEO of private car companies, fire the current CEO, and take the value of the company from the shareholders and simply give it to the Auto workers union. He has stated that he’ll use other avenues to push his energy policies after his cap and trade bill failed in his super majority congress even though a Presidents only avenue for implementing policy is congress. He’s told the whole nation he can mandate what you buy or don’t buy in terms of health insurance or you pay a penalty. (But it’s not a tax.) On his own he decided to fire missiles at Libya, without consulting or gaining approval of congress. Since firing missiles at a country isn’t an act of war, it’s okay.
At least we see where the liberal mindset is trying to get their brains around. How much power can the President, a position originally designed to he a head of state, but not all that powerful, acquire. Somehow gaining authority free of the constraints of congress, however temporary, to borrow money and then perform the executive power over that money, would be a wonderful precedent to put into the law books. If you want to gain more power for the President, or for anything else, we have a system built into the constitution that allows it to be amended. I know it is a lot of trouble, but let’s try to stick to our rules as they are the best we can.
It is hilarious to see conservatives all of a sudden concerned about the power of the executive when a Democrat is in charge. If only conservatives were equally as concerned with our last "decider and chief", we may not have had: Guantanamo, torture, presidential signing statements whose intent was to undermine the very intent of legislation, to name a few. This conservative hypocrisy is hilarious and pathetic. Before you respond and pretend you cared then about the power of the executive in the same way conservatives now claim to have cared about deficit under bush, reflect back on how conservatives did not seem to want to do anything about it until McCain/Palin lost in 2008 or how they are currently supporting and advocating for deficit increasing policies like increased defenses spending or unaffordable revenue and tax cuts.