"I will not play that game, because we've got to break that habit before it starts."

[babylonsister]

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/12/5/162323/123

It Can't Be This Bad for GOP, Can It?

by BooMan
Wed Dec 5th, 2012 at 04:23:23 PM EST


The Democrats seem oddly confident that they will succeed in killing off the debt ceiling. Obama doesn't seem like he even wants to discuss the debt ceiling:

"I will not play that game," Obama told the Business Roundtable, an organization of CEOs. "Because we've got to break that habit before it starts."

The Republicans will never give up their new toy. If they can't blackmail the administration, the Tea Party will have no more reason to exist. But listen to Chuck Schumer:

A group of Democratic senators predicted Wednesday that Republicans won't push the debt ceiling issue during ongoing fiscal cliff negotiations.

"I think they learned their lesson with the debt ceiling," said Sen. Chuck Schumer. "I don't think it's leverage at all. Any talk that that is leverage for them, I think, is false."

I'm tempted to ask what Chuck has been smoking.

[The Magistrate]

1. That's the Stuff, Ma'am!

Hear Hear!

[babylonsister]

3. Music to my ears, The Magistrate! nt

[grantcart]

5. I was wondering if the reason that the administration is confident of taking away the

power of the debt ceiling is that once it has a budget that legally establishes the debt the debt ceiling would be an unconstitutional attempt to negate the payment of debt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#References

Section 4 confirmed the legitimacy of all United States public debt appropriated by the Congress. It also confirmed that neither the United States nor any state would pay for the loss of slaves or debts that had been incurred by the Confederacy. For example, during the Civil War several British and French banks had lent large sums of money to the Confederacy to support its war against the Union.[47] In Perry v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court ruled that under Section 4 voiding a United States government bond "went beyond the congressional power."[48]

The United States debt-ceiling crisis in 2011 raised the question of what powers Section 4 gives to the President. Legal analyst Jeffrey Rosen has argued that Section 4 gives the President unilateral authority to raise or ignore the national debt ceiling, and that if challenged the Supreme Court would likely rule in favor of expanded executive power or dismiss the case altogether for lack of standing.[49] Erwin Chemerinsky, professor and dean at University of California, Irvine School of Law, has argued that not even in a "dire financial emergency" could the President raise the debt ceiling as "there is no reasonable way to interpret the Constitution that [allows him to do so]".[50] The issue of what effect Section 4 has regarding the debt ceiling remains unsettled.[51]

[Cha]

2. Great.. the gops didn't care when they were raising the debt ceiling when

bush was in there so they can really just take their "fiscal cliff" and jump.

Tweet found on the obama diary~

Eamon Javers

✔@EamonJavers Geithner, asked if the Administration is prepared to go over the cliff if R's don't agree to tax hikes on rich: "Oh, absolutely."

[Zorro]

4. I don't think they learned their lesson

The debt ceiling will be the next immediate fiscal crisis, and the Republicans will again demand cuts to SS and Medicare.