More on the 14th Amendment
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From Princeton University
history professor Sean Wilentz come these thoughts
(and a good deal of
interesting background) about the potential use of the 14th amendment as
justification for the White House unilaterally raising the debt ceiling.
Republicans
in the House of Representatives who declare they may refuse to raise the debt
limit threaten to do more than plunge the government into default. They are
proposing a blatant violation of the 14th Amendment, which states that “the
validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law” is
sacrosanct and “shall not be questioned.”
Yet the
Obama administration has repeatedly suppressed any talk of invoking the
Constitution in this emergency. Last Thursday Jay Carney, the White House
press secretary, said, “We do not believe that the 14th Amendment provides
that authority to the president” to end the crisis. Treasury Secretary Jacob
J. Lew reiterated the point on Sunday and added that the president would have
“no option” to prevent a default on his own.
In defense
of the administration’s position, the legal scholar Laurence H. Tribe, who
taught President Obama at Harvard Law School, has insisted, as he put it two
years ago, that “only political courage and compromise” can avert disaster.
These
assertions, however, have no basis in the history of the 14th Amendment;
indeed, they distort that history, and in doing so shackle the president. In
fact, that record clearly shows that Congress intended the amendment to
prevent precisely the abuses that the current House Republicans blithely
condone.
What’s
really ironic about this is that the debt related provisions in the 14th
amendment stem from concerns over Confederate debt that arose immediately
after the Civil War ended.
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Once again the scholars speak out and they are wrong again.
They fail to grasp "..., authorized by law, ..." means exactly what it says in the XIVth Amendment.
Article I, Section 8 specifically empowers Congress as the only branch that can authorize expenditures.
Now couple this with the last few years of no budget and only continuing resolutions to fund the beast. A continuing resolution is not inviolate or of infinite duration.
If no authorization exists, these supposed scholars are just pimps and whores for government dollars.
Worse of all, they are liars training our college attending youth to be liars. And getting free press coverage to boot.