DEBT CEILING CRISIS AND PRESIDENTIAL POWER

The use of the debt crisis to force the president to negotiate to lower taxes rate is fundamentally wrong especially at the constitutional level. Go back to the constitutional convention when the checks and balance system was being negotiated. The base concept was to balance power among the branches of government.  Can you imagine an argument between Hamilton and Madison with Madison explaining to the delegates that congress should set the spending cap or dept limit at the same time he was arguing that the control of the purse strings should be in the hand of the same body? Hamilton would be sure to point out that the old adage would apply; the fox is to guard the hen house.  Madison would have to concede that the power of the president to control the debt, without controlling individual spending items, that is line item spending, would check the power of the elective body to spend wildly. It would be justifiable power; thus, not conflict with the fear of the empirical presidency Gen. George Washington so feared. It would make sense to both sides of the aisle and the chairman of that convention. It would be a slam-dunk. Of course, this argument could never happen because there was no debt ceiling law in place or even thought about at that time. As an aside, this is another example of why constitutional fundamentalist are so wrong.

The proposal that there be a check and balance system in place concerning setting the budget cap would not be fool proof. Against the background of crazy congressional spending approved by George W. Bush, to allow the president to cap spending would not make sense. No one in his or her right mind would think the son of a “no more taxes” right wing president, in other words the son of a Bush, would approve all the spending, which I take as evidence that George W. was operating under a different agenda. His objective was to create a financial crisis intentionally hoping enough Democratic Party members would go along with his plan to destroy social programs such as Social Security and Medicare among other things to save the country. It did not work and will not work as long as we have Obama.