Reply #10: So what you're saying is this. [View All]

[Igel]

The debt must be paid. That's the 14th Amendment. The Constitution says that legislation to implement this is left to Congress, just as raising taxes and borrowing money is left to taxes. As well as passing a budget.

And, as good Democrats, we love the Constitution and the checks/balances and division of authority that enables a long-term government to exist. We insist on being known for this, and take great umbrage at the very mention that we don't lvoe the Constitution and the principles on which it was built.

But if it comes down to prioritizing things within the budget and doing things like paying the debt that the Constitution and budget say must be paid and not paying things that just the budget talks about, we can't do that.

The budget doesn't just authorize expenditures, no matter what it says, we assume it mandates them at the levels budgeted for. Everything's mandated, so everything must be funded. Doesn't matter what the language is, we have our assumptions. Obama is entirely servile when it suits us.

To violate our assumptions is wrong, even though it would just violate the alleged even-handedness of the Congress-passed budget. We can use that alleged even-handedness to force the 14th Amendment to come into play. This allows us to shred part--but only in the way that we find politically palatable--of Article I of the Constitution.

So we can't ignore an infringement of the Constitution, but to avoid the infringement we invoke part of the 14th Amendment to disregard the rest of the 14th Amendment and Article I. Of course, this puts real power in the hand of a strong leader who's nobody's servant, Obama.

Why? Because as good Democrats we have our assumptions and goals, and while nobody can even hint that we don't love the Constitution, it's toilet paper if it gets between us and our goals. Is this a fair reading of the situation?