No, the 14th Amendment would be his possible defense. The part he’d get tried for is breaking Article I Section 8 which gives Congress the responsibility of borrowing money on the Credit of the US (which they’ve created the Debt ceiling statutory law around).
Edit: regardless, lying about a blow job is an order of magnitude different than borrowing a couple trillion dollars without permission no matter the “type” of law broken.
Parliamentary dissolution rarely happens when one party has a majority. If your congress was a Commonwealth style Parliament like Canada or the UK’s, the Republican Party would already have everything they want short of the constitutional amendment. The type of unfettered power that our Conservative Party has is the stuff of wet dreams for the Republican Party.
Well in the end (if this passes) the debt limit gets increased, and you go argue the methods used before the american people. If they hate how the republicans did it, they will suffer in the election.
Increasing the debt limit past the elections and not tying increases to any specific vote make it a bill that isnt going to ruin the country like a default would have.
Had dinner tonight with a group who included a Very Stupid Person. As conversation turned towards the debt ceiling mess, he opined that “was it really such a bad thing if our credit rating is lowered? China and Japan only have AA ratings and they do ok. Heck, if they can’t borrow, maybe congress can stop spending money!”
We attempted to explain to his childlike, Tea-Party brain that an AA rating could result in a downgrade of US Treasuries, which could cause agencies to “break the buck” again on Money Market certificates as well as delivering a staggering blow to retirement investment accounts to Americans of all stripes…
…and none of that got through.
Fucking Tea Partiers.
Andrew
1745
What did the Republicans even get out of this in the end? Sure, there were no tax increases, but there weren’t going to be any either until the Republicans raised a fuss, and Obama tried to turn this into some kind of grand bargain to actually improve the deficit situation. There were spending cuts, but at least at one point I read that they were spread out over 10 or 20 years, and backloaded, so that the immediate cuts were almost inconsequential. I doubt some agreement passed this year will really have much influence over behavior in 15, so what did Republicans get? Nothing more than the opportunity to go back to their constituents and say that they stood up to big bad Obama who dared to ask for the money to fund the spending they already approved. The Republicans damaged the creditworthiness of the country for nothing more than a few campaign sound bites.
Dejin
1746
The Democrats are very bad at spinning and the Republicans are very good at it. IMO if Obama does the 14th amendment solution he’s basically committing political suicide and will have no chance at all of being re-elected.
Important added update to that ABC article
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/07/white-house-republicans-strike-tenative-deal-to-raise-debt-ceiling-.html
If Congress does not approve those cuts by December 23, automatic across-the-board cuts go into effect, including cuts to Defense and Medicare. This “trigger” is designed to force action on the deficit reduction committee’s recommendations by making the alternative painful to both Democrats and Republicans.
A vote, in both the House and Senate, on a balanced budget amendment.
Democrats won’t like the fact that Medicare could be exposed to automatic cuts, but the size of the Medicare cuts is limited and they are designed to be taken from Medicare providers, not beneficiaries.
Two sources briefed on the framework say the automatic cuts would hit Defense spending harder than Medicare.* A Republican briefed on the framework says this will be unacceptable to many Republicans because it could force them to face a choice between accepting tax increases (if that is what the committee recommends) or automatic cuts that would gut the Pentagon’s budget.
If this latest rumor is true and there’s a deal in the works, I hope to God it’s not doing any net spending reduction in the short term (like the next two years). The economy can literally not take it–look at the 2nd quarter GDP growth numbers that just came out–something less than 2% annualized growth? It’s nuts. And this crazy idea that the TeaTards have that it’s the deficit holding the economy back is insane.
The theory is that if democrats hold the majority, the republicans only get 80% of what they want instead of 100%. Democrats just refuse to play hardball and the Republicans call them on it every time.
Still, it is depressing and will likely lead to less voter turnout for Obama as his supporters get tired of the party caving all of the time, even if they didn’t have a choice if they wanted to save the hostage this time.
As certain recent posts in this thread show, there are a number of apologists who will overlook the Republican party threatening to suicide bomb the economy in order to force their agenda when they otherwise might have not been able to through sane means.
From Washington Post online
As Boehner was in his meetings, three freshman Republicans from South Carolina were in the House chapel nearby, in quiet discussion and in prayer. Reps. Mick Mulvaney, Tim Scott and Jeff Duncan wanted a stronger provision to guarantee a balanced-budget amendment and knew they would be lobbied furiously in the hours to come.
At one point, Duncan said, Mulvaney picked up a Bible and read a verse from Proverbs 22: “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”
“It’s telling me to really be bold, to really fight for structural changes,” Duncan said.
“Mulvaney snapped the Bible closed. And I said, ‘Guys, that’s all I need to see,’ ” Duncan said. “Tim said, ‘Yep.’ And we stood up and walked out.”
Alstein
1751
You can pretty much be impeached for any reason if enough people vote for it. Obama could pretty much do what he wants as long as he has 34 Senators agree with it. (Political consequences could be huge though)
Rimbo
1752
Impeached, yeah. Convicted? That’s something else, isn’t it?
You have a weird view of what constitutes negotiations and compromises in a political system.
http://nationaljournal.com/budget/outlines-of-debt-compromise-emerge-20110730
Other component parts of the tentative deal include:
$2.8 trillion in deficit reduction with $1 trillion locked in through discretionary spending caps over 10 years and the remainder determined by a so-called super committee.
The Super Committee must report precise deficit-reduction proposals by Thanksgiving.
The Super Committee would have to propose $1.8 trillion spending cuts to achieve that amount of deficit reduction over 10 years.
If the Super Committee fails, Congress must send a balanced-budget amendment to the states for ratification. If that doesn't happen, across-the-board spending cuts would go into effect and could touch Medicare and defense spending.
No net new tax revenue would be part of the special committee's deliberations.
Winning!
Well, if the system is anything like the Scandinavian parliaments, there is also a crucial difference - they are adults and at least (relatively) sane. The other major check on the exercise of power (I would assume), is that they know that their proposals must have a constitutional and popular base - otherwise when the Left comes back into power, they will roll back all or most of the changes they implement. At least in Scandinavia, that check has worked for many years (though effects can be skewed if one side of the political spectrum is in power for too long - but then that is the electorates choice).
The best case scenario is the across-the-board cuts, at least that will hack things that need to be hacked.
And that’s the Tea Party in a nutshell. They hear what they want to hear, and believe what they want to believe. If they had read, say, the next fucking verse…
Proverbs 22 also wraps up its litany of advice with this:
Not that I’m religious or anything, but if people are going to wave their holy book around like it’s some sort of mandate for their ideology, they could at least take the time to read it.
Cherry picking bible verses to support one’s arguments is a sad, long standing tradition.
The putative “solution” to the “crisis” has me full of despair.
JeffL
1760
Oh, man, listening to a White House guy explaining this morning how this tentative deal is a really good deal, and a win for Obama. Stephanopolous keeps nailing the guy on “what penalty or incentive is there for the committee to come up with a revenue piece? Is there anything built into this that forces that?” and the White House rep is tap dancing around the question.
And a Lyndsey Graham (R SC) is saying that Boehner will only get half the Republicans in the House to vote for this. Stephanapolous is incredulous, saying “This will go down if they can’t get more votes for this!” And then he interrupts and looks at Graham, with realization in his eyes, and says “You aren’t going to vote for this! Are you?” And Graham doesn’t really answer.
BTW - I so miss George S. on the Sunday morning shows. They brought him in this morning to help host because they know Amanpour is so weak (and the difference in what and how she is asking and George is striking.)
This is SO screwed. Obama and company are giving everything to the GOP. Obama said Monday a deal without revenue increases is unacceptable and unfair and that he’d veto anything like that, and now his reps are claiming this is a joint victory.
