Titanic, meet iceberg

[james_davis_nicoll]

White House budget office directs federal agencies to shut down

"Planet of the Apes (1968 Movie End Edit)" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

There's a third option that doesn't require violating any law. The rules allowing the Mint to make commemorative coins say they can create platinum coins of any value they want. And since commemorative coins are legal currency, if the Mint makes a trillion dollar coin and sends it to Treasury, the Treasury will technically be solvent.

The Administration declared this a non-starter during the last debt ceiling crisis, but if push comes to shove they'd be crazy not to use the loophole.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

During the last debt ceiling crisis, Obama was seen as willing to negotiate with terrorists (ie, capitulate), and the Democrats were soft of backbone. This time he isn't and they appear to be standing firm.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

We aren't in a debt crisis yet -- that won't start for a few more days, and I doubt Obama's evolved a backbone in the last eight months.

[cdodgson.livejournal.com]

There are several possible legal outs. Another would be to cite the 14th amendment clause that states that "The validity of the public debt of the United States ... shall not be questioned" to argue that any law preventing payment of debt (or necessary measures to allow that), including the debt ceiling, is and has always been unconstitutional.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

It should be noted that the US is pretty much the only country that has such a ridiculous system.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Mind, every government has some ridiculousness built into its system. I understand the start of every Canadian and British parliament is the debating of a bill that does nothing and that's never meant to be passed, and that British MPs can't resign from office, the prime minister included. Those are both matters of symbolism (the first, that whatever the Queen's Speech may say is urgent, the parliament can and shall discuss what it wants instead; the second, that MPs can't abdicate their responsibility to the public) and would require severe convolutions to actually become issues, but then, matters like the debt ceiling were too (it was mostly a chance for the opposition to complain about government spending) until the Republicans began weaponizing parliamentary procedure.

(British MPs ``resign'' by applying to the Crown for one of a couple of sinecures, which no longer have any actual duties and are granted as a matter of course; symbolically, this means taking up a responsibility to the Crown which supersedes that to the public.)