And this is just the budget. Ryan still has to deal with raising the debt limit, too.
But lets focus on the budget, and the budget “deal” that was negotiated and agreed to by Ryan himself, back in 2015, to much fanfare.
First, that deal was not a budget, but rather a series of agreed upon guidelines. Since becoming Speaker, Ryan has broken every single guideline he agreed to in that deal. Every one. And he is, once again, signalling (to nobody’s surprise who has been watching) that he is once again going to go with a CR, simply because he cannot manage the process of appropriations.
And as @lestatdelc correctly pointed out, there is no way in hell that Ryan is going to pass a budget next year, in the middle of Congressional re-election campaigns, either. Zilch. So we are looking at yet another year of Ryan being unable to do the most basic responsibility of his job as Speaker…pass appropriations bills. That is something he has been unable to do…Every.Single.Year.
Now returning to the debt limit battle looming, I seriously doubt Ryan is going to be able to get the HFC to go along with both another year and a half of CRs, AND a clean debt limit raise. They have him over the barrel, and they are fully aware of that. They WILL demand a chunk of his hide, or force him to go to Pelosi with hat in hand…which will be the end of his Congressional career (not just as Speaker, they WILL see him fried in his 2018 race for his seat if he works with Dems). Ryan is not a strong man. Ryan is not a principled man. Ryan WILL cave to whatever they demand. Hell, he has already forecast his game plan on this…he is going to toss whatever demands the HFC makes over the fence to McConnell, and let McConnell be the fall guy.
For those of us who enjoy watching them eat their own…its about to be the smorgasbord episode.
Okay now. This “Threat Looms, and I have developed a serious republican’t tight lips syndrome, I’m a failure, I lie way too much, I am a dick, there isn’t a damn thing I can do for the government of the United States and I know it” look has got to be addressed.
“Are we ever going to have regular appropriations again? Not anytime soon,” he told TPM.
Sums it up nicely doesn’t it. And what is the way out? After how horribly trump has shit the bed and exposed republican incompetence (not to mention corruption, racism, authoritarianism), you know the remaining GOPers are gonna work hard to destroy whatever Democrat steps into the chaotic vacuum he leaves, and try to claim He/she colluded with a foreign power and are also guilty of everything trump has done. When does it end?
Why would adding to the deficit make conservatives mad? That only works if the Democrats are in charge; if the Republicans are in charge, it’s drunken sailor time.
I’m sorry, forgive me, pardonez mois, uno momento por favor - but isn’t Mexico paying for that wall?
Since you claim Mexico is paying for that wall WHY EXACTLY are you threatening a shutdown if WE don’t pay for that wall?
We’re not paying for that wall. We’re not building that wall. In fact we’re going to take down the existing scar that’s causing so much misery for people and animals that already exists; It doesn’t stop anyone with a ladder or an airplane ticket.
But Trump is Trump and if he’s not bankrupting whatever he’s involved with he feels cheated. So there’s that.
And when he does bankrupt us?..?..?..I expect him and his family and his cabinet to be dragged out into the streets and treated like Ceaucescu.
I just find it funny that basically the appropriations bills have been in deep-freeze to the budget agreement that President Obama and then speaker Boehner hammered out (which was part of why I think Boehner got ousted, among other things) a couple of years ago.
Which is why we are a lot closer to a Gov. shutdown than I think most realize. The Freedumb caucus will not let a clean CR go. And with Trump bloviating he will try and jam wall funding into “must-pass” bills, the debt-limit and/or CRs to keep the lights on being the most obvious, we might be in for a real shit-show.
I personally think the Debt Ceiling won’t get raised.
There will be shit fights and arguments, then nothing (see repeal and replace). The Rs might, if they’re lucky, pass enabling legislation to allow the Treasury to prioritise Debt Payments.
If that passes, then the Tea-Party types suddenly have the ability to shrink the Govt by 30% that they’ve always wanted. Just do nothing and wait for the Debt Ceiling to do it for you.
I don’t believe prioritisation is constitutional. Treasury shouldn’t be able to pick and choose which Congressional appropriations are funded and which are not. But I also don’t really believe that will stop them.
A default on US Treasuries would be financially cataclysmic (and incredibly destructive to US power in the long term). So I think Treasury will take the lesser of two evils and choose the “keep the system working and worry about the constitutionality later” approach. If that means prioritising payments in a questionable way, then I think Treasury will do it.
That would so totally fuck the U.S. we would not know which way is up. Defaulting not he debt would destroy U.S. treasuries and seriously damage the dollar as a reserve currency.
Despite House Speaker Paul Ryan’s repeated promises
to return to so-called “regular order” in passing government spending
bills, Congress has over his tenure so far continued to kick the can
down the road without drafting and voting on a regular budget.
…
And nevertheless the GOP keeps getting reelected.
THEY CAN’T EVEN PASS A DAMNED BUDGET and they get reelected.
Does this make any sense to anyone? It doesn’t to me. They also need to pass a debt ceiling bill. I wonder if they can.
I think that can become a bit of a sticky wicket. The Executive Branch must spend money as designated by Congress. So the concept or prioritizing money is most probably unconstitutional (Congress designated this money for paying for new fighter planes or for making Social Security payments, not for meeting debt payments). But what happens when Congress refuses to allow the Executive Branch to raise the money to meet those appropriations?
The intrinsic problem is the debt ceiling itself is probably unconstitutional, and refusing to raise it puts the President in an impossible dilemma . If he doesn’t make debt payments, then he violates the Constitution by defaulting on debt, and if he does make debt payments via prioritization methods, he violates the Constitution by not spending money as designated by Congress. Keep in mind that issuing debt is done to finance the appropriations that Congress has already approved, not new ones.
So in the light, does Congress have the power to force the President to violate the Constitution, regardless of which option he takes? My guess is that no, they don’t…for quite obvious reasons.
The “shalll not be questioned” clause was designed to mean the south couldn’t repudiate the debt after civil war. It doesn’t mean that the US Treasury can’t default on a payment. The US Treasury did default on some payments back in the 80s thanks to a computer glitch.
I don’t the Executive is in quite the impossible catch 22 you have suggested. It’s close, but not quite perfect.
If they choose to simply pay the costs, all costs, in order of receipt then payments will slowly become more and more delayed. But at no point has the Treasury (representing the Executive) chosen to prioritise anything.
In response to an impossible directive (which amounts to “take this $100 and buy $105 worth of stuff”) the Treasury has just started at the top of the list and stopped when they ran out of money. That’s not quite the same as deliberate skipping over item 3 on the list because the TREASURY thinks that item 4 is more important.
I suspect that deliberate action of prioritising is consequential.
Actually, the article you link makes a pretty strong case against what you are saying. The language was specifically chosen to put payment of our debts above the petty political squabbling of Congress.
Defaulting on some payments due to a computer glitch, is not even close to the same thing as deliberately refusing to raise the debt limit. That’s not a glitch, its a purposeful move by Congress to violate the Constitution, or to force the Executive Branch to do so on their behalf.
I strongly suspect that if the debt limit isn’t raised that A) there WILL be a case heard by the SCOTUS on the matter and B) SCOTUS will determine that the debt limit is itself unconstitutional; if Congress wishes to rein in spending and reduce the national debt, they have the means readily available to them via appropriations; they can either raise taxes, cut spending, or both.
Indeed, another case could be made that the debt ceiling is, in essence, the current Congress attempting to nullify the appropriations bills of previous Congresses. (which it is, be it through an appropriations bill or a continuing resolution…those are actual laws that previous Congresses passed to spend that amount of money on those specific items).
And while I recognize I have a strong opinion on this, I cannot come up with a valid constitutional argument FOR the debt ceiling.
But I absolutely agree, that any deliberate act of prioritizing would most likely put the President in constitutional jeopardy.
On the other hand, the language could be seen as simply forbidding outright repudiation, not temporary default. Default on U.S. bonds would, in this analysis, not dispute the “validity” of the debt; it would simply delay repayment. But remember the strict language. Suppose you lend $10,000 to your cousin. When the debt comes due, he says, “Listen, I’m good for the money, but I’m a little short right now. Trust me, I will get it to you sooner or later.”
But I realise I am using a technical definition of default, that might not tally with what you are reading…
If the US is supposed to pay $100 on Monday and instead pays on Wednesday, then on Tuesday it is in default.
But as the article says, the validity of the debt is not questioned. Just the payment timetable.
I agree that if the prioritisation is used then we are going to SCOTUS. I’m less convinced that the Debt Ceiling will be found to be unconstitutional. (Though it might be.)
The underlying problem is simply that the Congress is giving mutually incompatible instructions. Doesn’t meant that either side of the instruction is unconstitutional. It just means that the overall set of instructions is dumb.
