I kind of, sort of, understand Democrats who are pushing the platinum coin gambit as a kind of tit-for-tat madman rejoinder to the Republicans’ threat to default on our debt. If the idea is that we’ll act just as crazy as the GOP is acting and force them to back down, then I kind of get it. But anyone who seriously suggests that the courts would uphold the platinum coin stunt or that it is legally justified by a plain reading of the statute, is either a moron or they are lying to you. The Constitution is clear that the Treasury Department cannot mint money and, if you want to get technical, it is potentially unconstitutional to allow the Treasury to mint even “commemorative” coins. Congress delegates minting to the Federal Reserve, but they retain their right to authorize it or not to authorize it. The president has no say in the matter. Beyond that, the Courts do consider legislative intent and statutory construction whenever a law has an obviously unintended consequence. A small part of a bill that allows the minting of commemorative coins does not intend to allow the Treasury to mint trillions of dollars against the will of Congress. I cannot imagine a judge seeing it otherwise, and the Congressional Record on the matter is clear about both the intent of the law and the fact that Congress considered it to have no budgetary impact. Paul Krugman knows this and he is bullshitting you when he says, “at least as I understand it, the letter of the law would allow Treasury to stamp out a platinum coin, say it’s worth a trillion dollars, and deposit it at the Fed — thereby avoiding the need to issue debt.”
Only by completely ignoring the principles of legislative intent and statutory construction, and the likely rulings of the Courts, could anyone consider those comments to be true. I suppose we could quibble about what “the letter of the law” means, but I think it should mean what any reasonable judge would say that it means.
When it comes to the 14th Amendment, the argument is on surer footing. Section IV of that amendment states:
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
Of course, that language was offered in the context of the government’s announcement that it would welsh on all Confederate debts. But it nonetheless establishes the principle that the United States must pay its debts. We owe it, we pay it. That places a responsibility on both the Congress and the President of the United States. If Congress won’t pay its debts, the president is justified in defying them and paying our debts anyway. But, how?
He could, as people are suggesting, respond by saying that if Congress is going to go crazy and break the law, then he is going to break the law, too, to defend the Constitution. That is a defensible position as long as we’re being honest that the law is being broken all around.
