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Journal by fustakrakich
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned...
Let's see if Biden has the cajones to bypass congress and kill the debt ceiling
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
(1)
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
-- Ogden Nash
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 08, @06:50AM (21 children)
My take is that that passage attempts to underline the importance of honoring the US's debt commitments. That would be grotesquely violated by a unilateral and illegal move by President Biden to both bypass Congress and increase spending without bound.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08, @07:02AM (1 child)
Some congress critters that are refusing to pay the bounties for the suppression of insurrection and rebellion were themselves involved in said insurrection and rebellion. Looks like you are going to have to do some very difficult thinking to find a way around this one, khallow. (And, what the hell happened to Fusty? Where are the both sides?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11, @05:33AM
There is no "both sides"!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08, @07:21AM (12 children)
The debt ceiling is absurd.
Biden is required by law to spend money on various programs. When Congress appropriates money, Biden is required to spend it as Congress requires. It is illegal for Biden to not spend money as directed by Congress. This was settled by Train v. City of New York (1975).
When Congress appropriates more expenditures than the Treasury receives in taxes, the Treasury addresses this by borrowing money. They are borrowing money because Congress mandated the amount of money that is spent, and how it is spent. When Congress passes an unbalanced budget, they are in effect requiring the Treasury to borrow money. However, the debt ceiling makes it illegal for the Treasury to borrow money to satisfy those obligations.
There is no legal option for Biden if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling. He is required by law to spend money. Because the budget is unbalanced, the Treasury has to borrow money to cover the deficit. However, Congress is also making it illegal to borrow the necessary money to pay for the budget that Congress passed. It's farcical. You complain that Biden would be breaking the law by invoking the 14th amendment. But if Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling, Biden has no options that don't involve breaking the law.
This is why so-called fiscal conservatives in the GOP are a complete joke. There is a perfectly good solution to addressing the debt. Pass a balanced budget. This can and should be addressed by not appropriating money in excess of projected revenue. They also have the option of not giving tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations like they did with Trump's tax cuts. Again, Trump's tax cuts significantly increased the deficit. The debt ceiling fight isn't about actually balancing the budget. This is 100% about trying to harm Biden politically, even if it means sending the economy into a downward spiral and screwing over a lot of Americans. Also, if you're serious about balancing the budget, you can't arbitrarily keep defense off the table. That's more evidence that Republicans aren't serious about balancing the budget.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @02:51AM (11 children)
The debt ceiling was created to justify austerity to the public so they don't riot. Very practical indeed
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 09, @03:03AM (10 children)
Don't worry. Continue to spend well above the US's means and austerity will justify itself without a need for a debt limit law.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @03:13AM (9 children)
But we're not. The money is just being stolen by the financial industry, trillions and trillions for bailouts and coverage of derivatives (only they need a thousand times that to cover those). The "debt" is a fraud
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 09, @03:40AM (8 children)
Fusty, is there any reason you're posting AC in your own journal? I'll note that NotSanguine was talking about "binding commitments" [soylentnews.org]. I think it'd be interesting for you to discuss binding commitments to an industry of thieves with him. Certainly worth the popcorn.
As for my take, it doesn't matter who steals the money, the consequences will fall on the US in the forms of things like austerity, debt default, high inflation, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @03:47AM (6 children)
The money that went to the Wall Street bailouts would pay off the "debt" many times over.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 09, @04:04AM
Last I checked, QE was in the neighborhood of seven trillion. US publicly held debt is a bit shy of $32 trillion. Not seeing your claim over here.
And if we extend our attention to liabilities rather than just debt, we're looking at roughly $100 trillion [aei.org] in unfunded liabilities (mostly Social Security and Medicare).
(Score: 2) by Tork on Tuesday May 09, @08:36PM (4 children)
Um, no. C'mon dude, you sound that dude that claimed our intestines are long enough to reach to the moon and back.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @09:00PM (3 children)
Over 30 tril since 2008.. likely more than that since they basically quit counting, and if you want to keep on ignoring derivatives, keep on laughing then. The money is there, it's just sequestered in the financial markets, interest is the theft there, it's like a rain forest canopy, we get what trickles down, the "debt" is bullshit
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 10, @01:02PM (2 children)
More like 7 trillion. But even if it were 30 trillion, that wouldn't be enough to pay for US debts several times over.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11, @04:22AM (1 child)
As usual you are wrong again, believing in Hollywood accounting..
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1970414 [ssrn.com]
And that was only up to 2010! Add thirteen more years of bailouts.. looks like a lot more than 30 tril
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday May 11, @01:41PM
In other words, they consider only transactions away from the Fed ("spending"), not to it, and the measures of maximum outstanding aren't being considered. When I look at stuff like figures 1 and 2 at the very beginning, it doesn't appear to be that considerable, even if we suppose that the assets side have zero value - they built up a bit less than $3 trillion in liabilities by 2012.
The real story is who the Fed transacts with. $16.4 trillion of these transactions are with 14 firms: Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AIG, Barclays (UK), Bank of America, BNP Paribas (France), Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse (Switzerland), Deutsche Bank (Germany), RBS (UK), JP Morgan Chase, and UBS (Switzerland). I certainly grant that looks like a bit of theft to a small group of large banks.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @11:09AM
I posit that he is not. Only that some AC running up the particularly stupid talking points that an Ayn/Rand/Paul idiotic liberatarian in such a way as to make khallow appear even more stupid than usual, if that is even possible. Have a good day! Khallow! Preferably one with less shitposting!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08, @08:03PM
Congress already spent it. Now Biden has to pay the bill to avoid welching on the debt.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday May 09, @01:38AM (4 children)
Except it isn't "spending without bound," rater, it's "paying for goods/services and other expenditures both already received, as well as other binding commitments (i.e., the law) to pay certain monies on a certain schedule.
Raising the 'debt limit' gives the government the means to pay for the stuff we've already received and honor the commitments enshrined in laws passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the President.
Approval (via the budget process, passed by Congress and signed into law by the President -- I keep saying that. Why is that important?) of the expenditures in question is over. Refusing to fund appropriations already made, voted on, passed and signed into law, especially at the risk of the "full faith and credit" of the US government to win political points is cynical beyond belief.
It's odd that those braying the loudest about how one group is "destroying" America are the group who are actually willing to seriously threaten the US economy, the government's (and by extension US businesses and individuals) ability to borrow money. That seems much more destructive than giving equal rights to the fraction of one percent of Americans whose gender identity doesn't match that which they were assigned at birth. Much more destructive than a bunch of transvestites reading children's stories onstage in a nightclub.
I think some folks need to get their priorities straight.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 09, @02:59AM (3 children)
Debt ceiling was the bound, thus without that, it is genuinely spending without bound. And there seems to be a lot of selectivity about which binding commitments we should commit to.
Except when higher debt destroys the means to pay for the stuff. Keep in mind also that Congress could have commit more to honoring the debt ceiling which is another of these enshrining laws, and spend less so that the debt ceiling wasn't an issue.
Only if you ignore why. Debt limits wouldn't have existed in the first place, if the above leadership had been serious about honoring commitments enshrined in law or the "full faith and credit" thing. My take is that we're seeing a taste of what would happen if the US were to go Wiemar Republic - refusing to stop spending money on commitments it can't honor nor even borrow money for.
My take is these commitments will be defaulted on, should the US continue on its current path of increasing spending faster than GDP group. You may be one of the folk who need to get their priorities straight.
I find it interesting how we continue to get the same cheap talk on how important the US laws are that encouraged a century of irresponsible spending, but somehow miss that the debt limit law is just as sacred and just as profane.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @04:59PM (2 children)
If you wanna get pissy about priorities and debt then stop voting for conservatives and stop defending them. Dems aren't perfect but their track record on debt management is better. Look at you predicting a default, seems like you almost want it.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Thursday May 11, @12:14AM (1 child)
I don't vote for conservatives. And I defend them merely because of the irrational pathology of how you attack them. Use reasoning and logic, then I have better things to do.
Only because they have President Clinton who really did a lot for debt management. Really, it's shitshow on both sides once you exclude that guy.
We already see default in the form of high inflation and forcing the country into poor future choices. Even if I were fantasizing about some adventure story of how awesome I would be in a world of government default, that story wouldn't change that default and similar failings remain a genuine danger today that most of the developed world is already slowly sliding into. My personal feelings are a red herring.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 13, @07:06PM
So you're full of shit, got it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08, @07:00AM (26 children)
I don't agree with you about much of anything, fusty. However, I'd rather have you posting here than have this site lose yet another regular participant. We've lost enough already. There were many user names that were active here a couple of years ago that are long gone. Anyway, where have you been? As much as I disagree with most of your posts, it's good to have you back posting here.
I want to be honest and admit that the Democrats have a lot of responsibility for this situation. They knew Republicans weren't going to be reasonable about the debt ceiling. Democrats had the opportunity to address the debt ceiling through reconciliation in the previous Congress. They chose not to do it, fully aware that Republicans were going to play this game. It frustrates me greatly that Democrats didn't address this five or six months ago.
Now, if Biden tries to invoke the 14th amendment, there's a good chance that the House Republicans will sue him. The Supreme Court will probably be very happy to rule in the favor of the Republicans, probably saying that the relevant clause of 14th amendment should only be narrowly interpreted to refer to debts incurred during the Civil War. What should Biden do if he tried to involve the 14th amendment and it gets blocked by the Supreme Court? What's his next move?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by owl on Monday May 08, @05:20PM (14 children)
Reality is that the "debt ceiling" has simply become a political football that both sides like to use to try to force the other side into conceding to their demands. Both sides are just as guilty here, and both sides should be blamed for the game of chicken that is now being played.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08, @07:08PM (5 children)
I don't think that is accurate. Democratic administrations the last 30 years have had more luck balancing the budget. There is plenty of pitical football, but the last 20 years has been filled with disturbing Republican actions that vastly increased US debt. Obama had to deal with Iraq, so any complaints there will get tossed back on to the war criminals Bush and Cheney that started a war under entirely false pretenses.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Tuesday May 09, @12:42AM (4 children)
In other words, in the past thirty years (really much longer than that), there was one administration which came close to balancing the budget, the Clinton administration. It was Democrat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11, @04:29AM (3 children)
Yeah! The one that repealed Glass-Steagall! Neat trick, huh? "You'll dance to anything"...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday May 13, @05:33AM (2 children)
You're digging your hole deeper. That repeal remains a good idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 13, @06:00AM (1 child)
Yeah, to you, and the bankers you so cravenly serve.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Sunday May 14, @12:25AM
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday May 08, @07:20PM (7 children)
There are zero examples of the Democrats pulling this stunt.
This is a 100% Republican move.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 08, @08:42PM (6 children)
There is a reason that Debt Limit Extorsion is called "Newt Gringrich's Really Big Idea".
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday May 08, @09:55PM (5 children)
According to fusty both sides are equally at fault for Newt Gingrich.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @02:46AM (3 children)
:-) Only one side.. thriving through a robust symbiotic relationship between two "rival" factions, both serving the very same financiers, to give the appearance of opposition. Simple reelection is the goal, keep the game running. Helps prevent a shooting war, eh?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16, @06:23PM (2 children)
You are such a smug douche, but as the other comment said few people around here are unaware of political bs. Yes there is a corrupt 'uniparty' but most users here understand that. Does not change the fact that both parties have genuine believers, though mostly it is the DNC pols who still have a conscience. The whole 'both sides' agenda you push is unhelpful since one side is hell bent on fascist domination. It is ludicrously obvious that the GOP are white supremacist nazis, and the DNC is filled with corporate stooges trying to maintain the capitalust class. That does not mean all politicians are corrupted fully, but your propaganda does not allow for nuance. No one wants your agenda fustybrah
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16, @07:04PM
And every Black, LatinX, Asian Republican is an Uncle Tom.
Get better material. Your fascist NAAAAAAZI schizophrenia does not work in the real world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 18, @05:12AM
Whoops! You did it again! There. is. no. both. sides. You are farting into the wind. Wake me when you comprehend what I wrote, though I'm sure your own hysterical biases preclude that
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @11:12AM
Especially Callista, and that unnamed house page, that he was prone to bending over; k. Hallow, was that his name? Oh, the things that go down in DC, out of love for money!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @12:39AM (5 children)
Democrats never resolve anything that can be turned into a weapon against Republicans. Why haven't we got abortion rights codified yet? Where is the universal healthcare? Where is the police reform? Where is the firearm legislation? They only ever come up with performative stunts that stoke division without creating change. They don't actually want to change anything, they just want to win the next election. Not that Republicans (or any other political organization that gets into power) are any better, just differently bad.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @05:06PM (4 children)
Bothsideism is a mental disease that allows you to feel cynically superior. Fair to call out real problems like not passing abortion protections in the 3 month window where it may have been pissible, but it is also unfair when some DNC politicians are secretly Republican like Manchin and Sinema. The uniparty is a collection of corrupted politicians working for billionaires, not every single D or R.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @08:12PM (3 children)
You only need a majority to make the uniparty work (just call it 'The Party', mkay?).
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10, @09:49PM (2 children)
Go soak your head, everyone knows politics is corrupted and your both sides agenda is lame apathy generation from a troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11, @04:40AM (1 child)
You also have reading problems, there is no "both sides". DNC/GOP is symbiotic, not opposition
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16, @06:16PM
Speaking of reading problems LOL
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Tuesday May 09, @03:01AM (3 children)
Like pav and exaeta? Sometimes wars don't go the way you'd like. I'm a bit surprised that fusty has returned. Maybe Russia plans to make a better showing over the next few months and needs to set up the propaganda groundwork for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @04:42AM (2 children)
Victory Day is a big day in Russia, or at least it is historically. The relative quietness of this year's, the fact some usual activities are being skipped, how things are going in Ukraine, more political groups in Russia openly questioning Putin, the increased conscription, conscription in areas they've previously avoided for political reasons, and the general increase in Russian propaganda inside and outside of Russia does suggest that not only are they are getting ready for something, but that they see its success as necessary to prevent their further loss of internal and external power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 09, @02:43PM (1 child)
Zelenskyy will host the next Victory Day.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10, @02:59AM
At the rate they are generating lop-sided deals, I wouldn't be surprised if the next Victory Day is hosted by Xi Jinping or Narendra Modi.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10, @08:36PM
Ignore SCOTUS.