Democrats Urge Obama To Just Raise Debt Ceiling Himself

Rep. James Clyburn and a group of House Democrats are urging President Barack Obama to invoke the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling if Congress can’t come up with a satisfactory plan before the Tuesday deadline.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/60038.html#ixzz1TKUSLVNw

Can you spell - IMPEACH OBAMA?

 

My phone has trouble displayng politico.com. Can you remind me what the 14th amendment is?

 

Sounds like a great idea.Raise the limit himself and tell the GOP to go fuck themselves







Clyburn, the third-ranking House Democrat, said Wednesday that if the president is delivered a bill to raise the debt ceiling for only a short period of time, he should instead veto it and
turn to the phrase in the Constitution that says the validity of the U.S. government’s debt “shall not be questioned.”



“I believe that something like this will bring calm to the American people and will bring needed stability to our financial markets,” Clyburn added,
noting that President Harry Truman did it once during his presidency after Congress was unable to pass a bill to raise the debt ceiling.

 

I doubt Obama's got the stones to do this.

 

Of course he wont.After already agreeing to cuts with no new revenue he'll cave to republicans again

 

democrat cuts are mostly phony accounting tricks and I really have not seen much substance from the republicans either.

 

Clyburn is one of the biggest morons in congress. The President can only spend moneys that have been appropriated by the congress. He doesn't have the authority to run up debt not approved by congress any more than I do.

I don't know the history of the debt clause in the 14 th amendment, but I suspect it was directed at the possibility of debt run up to fight the Civl War being repudiated by later administrations. You will recall that Lincoln, like Obama, was elected by a radical party representing a very narrow slice of the country, chiefly New England and the upper midwest. As now, corruption was endemic in government and I suppose they feared that some later reform group would attemp to repudiate the national debt.

 

It's pretty much this: current spending is 100. We propose to increase that to 120 but we'll agree to cut 10 so the net is 10 in new spending.

Now we go on TV and claim the other party is trying to cut 10 from spending which will kill seniors and children and cause the world to end.

 

I sincerely hope that should Obama overstep his authority on this, as you say, that the republicans launch an impeachment.

 

http://www.aim.org/newswire/white-house-rules-out-constitution-debt-option/

White House rules out Constitution debt option


WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will not use a clause in the Constitution to bypass Congress and raise the federal government’s debt limit on his own, the White House said Tuesday.

“It’s not available,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in the administration’s firmest dismissal of the 14th Amendment as a way to avoid a default if Congress fails to lift the $14.3 trillion debt limit by an August 2 deadline.

“The Constitution makes clear that Congress has the authority, not the president, to borrow money and only Congress can increase the statutory debt ceiling. That is just a reality.”

The 14th Amendment stipulates the U.S. public debt “shall not be questioned” — which some legal scholars argue would allow Obama, a Democrat, to sidestep lawmakers and raise the borrowing limit on his own.

The White House has persistently poured cold water on the idea that a provision in the Constitution stemming from the Civil War in the 1860s to make sure Union debts were honored and Confederate obligations were not could be a way around the debt impasse.

But some influential Democrats have continued to see it as a legitimate strategy to sidestep a Congress deadlocked over the debt limit because of fiscally conservative Tea Party Republicans who will not compromise on any tax increases.

Former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, has said that if it came to averting a U.S. default, he would invoke the 14th Amendment, raise the debt ceiling and “force the courts to stop me.”

Obama played down this notion Friday, when he said White House lawyers were “not persuaded that that is a winning argument.” But his remarks did signal the 14th Amendment route was at least being reviewed by his administration.

That impression remained intact after comments by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Sunday that bypassing Congress was “not a workable option,” which also appeared to stop short of a flat-out rejection.

Tuesday, Carney went out of his way to rule it out.

“You can have an esoteric discussion about constitutional law and what could not or should not be,” he said. “But we don’t have the luxury or the time. The law is as it is. That is how we view it and that is why we have to reach a compromise.”