Reposted from Gateway Pundit --
Yesterday Barack Obama told CBS that there simply may not be enough money in the coffers next month to pay Social Security payments.
Yesterday Barack Obama told CBS that there simply may not be enough money in the coffers next month to pay Social Security payments.
Here's a don't-miss interview with NBC's Savannah Guthrie and Tea Party Patriots leader Mark Meckler on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports.
Meckler was firmly against raising the debt ceiling, and dismissed consequences of it not passing. On President Obama's contention that Social Security checks might not go out, Meckler contended: "That's just simply a lie. There is plenty of revenue to pay our Social Security obligations. There's plenty of revenue to pay our debt, our interest on the debt obligations. If the president and Secretary Geithner choose not to pay Social Security, they'll be held responsible. They'll be held responsible by recipients, and they'll be held responsible by the American public."
He provided no citations for his contention, but instead claimed that "there's enough money to pay for Social Security, to pay the basic entitlement programs, and to pay for critical services in the United States of America."
"This is fear-mongering," he said. "This is just fear mongering."
Congressman Paul Broun, M.D. (GA-10) today introduced unique legislation, H.R. 2409 the Debt Ceiling Reduction Act, that would lower the debt ceiling from $14.3 trillion back down to $13 trillion. The legislation would be enacted at the beginning of FY 2012 and would force Congress to begin to pay off a portion of the national debt while drastically reducing spending.“Should my legislation be signed into law, Washington would have to actually make the cuts that until now they’ve only talked about, and our national debt would be one step closer to being manageable,” said Congressman Broun. “My legislation would not just slow down, or stop the reckless spending train; it would completely turn it around.
“Americans are tired of lawmakers who talk out of both sides of their mouths and make promises that they can’t keep. This bill offers a real and true solution for our fiscal dilemma, and I whole heartedly hope that my colleagues will either ante up – or try their luck at another profession.”
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Seeking to make virtue out of vice, the political Left has launched a desperate, devious and dangerous ploy to prevent the spending cuts that the public demands.
They are laying the groundwork for President Obama to bypass negotiations and to ignore the $14.3-trillion statutory ceiling on federal debt. They want him to instruct the Treasury to borrow whatever it needs to satisfy grandiose spending designs, by claiming that the borrowing limit is unconstitutional.
If this happened, it would add a constitutional crisis to our economic crisis. And it would worsen our economic problems.
The Left bases their plan on a dangerous misreading of the 14th Amendment. They employ deceptive rhetoric to depict the big spenders as the saviors of the Constitution. They claim it’s the Constitutional remedy to protect our economy from the supposed alternative Armageddon’s of defaulting on debt or devastating reductions in spending.
The Left adds that this also would save us from the evil Republicans who won’t go along with job-killing tax hikes.
Declaring the debt ceiling unconstitutional and void would be a course reversal for Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner, who have been claiming that doom is around the corner because of the debt limit. But a reversal would not be the first time Obama has declared his position is “evolving” to match his political interests. Nor would it be the first time Obama claimed a Presidential prerogative to ignore laws that he finds inconvenient.
Twice offered a public opportunity to repudiate this horrid idea, Obama has twice refused to do so.
The 14th Amendment idea began quietly percolating on the Left a few months ago. As it became clear that they were losing the fight over deficit spending, the Left last week began to unveil articles by cooperative law professors, economists, columnists and pundits, covered by CBS News, MSNBC, USA Today, The Washington Post, and numerous other outlets. The Huffington Post has been the biggest cheerleader for the plan.
The proponents base their false claim on a selective reading of the 14th Amendment’s statement that, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law . . . shall not be questioned.” The language was adopted after the Civil War. Because the adjacent passage of the Amendment expressly disavows any debts of the former Confederacy, the drafters needed to distinguish this from the valid debt issued by the Union.
Nobody is questioning the validity of our legally-issued debt, nor should they, but the President has no authority to create additional debt that Congress has not approved.
As noted by The Heritage Foundation’s Andrew Grossman, “it does not follow that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional. . . . Indeed, unilateral action by the President to borrow money would be an unconstitutional usurpation of the legislative power. The Constitution [in Article 1, Section 8] vests the power to ‘to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States’ and the power ‘to borrow money on the credit of the United States’ in the Congress, not the President. The President lacks the authority to, on his own accord, make expenditures which have not been authorized by Congress (because Congress has imposed a debt ceiling that supersedes any such authorizations) or to undertake borrowing that has not been authorized by Congress.”
Constitutional expert and former federal appellate judge Dr. Michael McConnell sums up quite simply the notion that the 14th Amendment invalidates the debt ceiling. McConnell eloquently says, “Bunk.”
Since 1917, Congress has exercised its control over debt by placing a statutory cap on the total amount that can be borrowed. This is an exercise of Congress’ explicit and exclusive Constitutional authority—as opposed to a drummed-up misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment to create some new Presidential power to issue unlimited debt. As noted by the Congressional Research Service, “The debt limit also provides Congress with the strings to control the federal purse, allowing Congress to assert its constitutional prerogatives to control spending.”
To sum it all up: As the 14th Amendment states, debt must be “authorized by law.” As Article 1 states, only Congress can do that authorizing.
The Left’s effort to reverse this is desperate, devious and dangerous. They have seen polls showing 60 to 70 percent of the public oppose an increase in borrowing, so they are desperately trying to preserve big government. Their twisting of the Constitution is devious. And ignoring the debt ceiling would be dangerous to future generations and to today’s economy.
Imagine the chaos in financial markets if they could not distinguish Congressionally-approved and valid Treasury notes from Presidentially-authorized and questionable debt. The Left has a bad answer for this: Get the Federal Reserve to buy the new debt. That would mean printing more currency, inflating our money and further devaluing the dollar.
The entire 14th Amendment ploy needs to be shot down and denounced for what it is—another liberal maneuver to bypass both the Constitution and public opinion and to protect big government at all costs.
Adding a constitutional crisis on top of our economic crisis would only make things worse.
For Chairman Upton's report on the out of control EPA, click here. To read more about how the EPA is using your money to teach pigs in Thailand how to pass gas in a jar and to fund more liberal climate programs in other countries, please click here.OUTRAGE OF THE YEAR: EPA SENDING TAX DOLLARS TO CHINA
July 7, 2011
WASHINGTON, D.C. - "Outrage of the Year" - that is what U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, is calling the distribution of tax dollars to China by the Obama Administration, through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to promote its climate change agenda. This information comes from a report released by Congressman Fred Upton, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
"As the White House calls Congressional leaders to a meeting to address our nation's debt and spending crisis, a report recently released by Congressman Fred Upton shows that the Obama EPA has been spending millions of taxpayer dollars in places like China - a country we already owe 1.2 trillion - to promote its liberal climate change agenda," Senator Inhofe said. "This is truly the outrage of the year.
"When I became Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 2003, I made it a priority to provide greater oversight over how EPA spends our tax dollars. By 2004, EPA was required to implement a new competition policy for awarding funds and maintain a Grants Award Database so that taxpayers could view EPA's spending information online.
"Chairman Upton's report makes use of this database: it shows that EPA has awarded $718,000 to China's EPA to assist with control of air emissions, $700,000 to Thailand to collect methane from pig farms and $150,000 to Interpol for climate change programs. Since 2009, $27 million in taxpayer dollars has been sent to foreign countries."