For the record, and Duncan’s benefit, I don’t think the platinum coin gambit would cause inflation in our current situation, I know that the president wouldn’t use it to buy bling, and I have said nothing about whether the whole thing could be “fixed” or not. I even said in my piece that I kind of get why it would be done, or at least why people would threaten to do it. I just disagree that it is legal or that the Courts would ultimately rule that it was legal.
The only reason Duncan and Krugman are talking crazy like this is to highlight how crazy it is to threaten to default on our debts. I hope they don’t really think they are making a reasonable argument on the merits. Because I see no reason why, using their legal analysis, B. Barry Bamz couldn’t buy the entire world with T Mac Geithner’s coins…and it would be legal just because.
Wait, why would it be legal for Obama to use platinum coins to do whatever he wants? The whole reason we’re talking about this is because he needs to make expenditures that Congress has authorized but Congress has also said that he can’t do that by raising taxes or borrowing money.
This argument makes much less sense than the one about statutory interpretation.
Let’s take this slow.
Either the law authorizes the Treasury Secretary to mint trillion dollar coins or it doesn’t.
If it does, then he can do it for any purpose.
If it doesn’t, then he can’t for any purpose.
What you are arguing is that it is legal for the president to pay our debts even if he has no money to do it. And he can create money out of thin air to do it because he is legally obligated to find some way to get it done.
What I am arguing is that you might have a point, but that the interpretation of the law people are using is bullshit.
Er, no. Barry Bamz can only spend money on things Congress has appropriated, he can’t do it “for any purpose.” In fact, under the Impoundment Control Act he must spend money that he is told to spend, which is the crux of this dispute- if they don’t raise the debt ceiling, Congress has simultaneously told Obama he legally must spend money and that he legally can not borrow that money- he therefore breaks the law either way unless he resorts to some “gimmick” like the coin. I smell articles of impeachment!
Now, arguably he could print coins to buy back all of the outstanding Treasury bonds and wipe out the public debt, but that is all he can do- he can’t spend the money on any program not authorized by Congress.
Of course he can. He has his own commemorative currency now. According to Krugman et. al. he can sell this currency to the Fed even though Congress never authorized it. And it can buy it back, too.
Er, doesn’t the legislation in question authorize the sale of those commemorative coins? It may not authorize the President to buy it back, but I’m pretty sure if this actually happens it’ll be a one time thing, after which there will be an arrangement where legislation defangs the debt ceiling and closes the platinum coin loophole.
Er, doesn’t the legislation in question authorize the sale of those commemorative coins? It may not authorize the President to buy it back, but I’m pretty sure if this actually happens it’ll be a one time thing, after which there will be an arrangement where legislation defangs the debt ceiling and closes the platinum coin loophole.
I don’t see why he couldn’t. It wouldn’t make much of a dent in the debt, but if the Treasury has a bunch of Girl Scout Centennial coins sitting around, they could take those over to the Fed and deposit them. The Fed would have to recognize them, because they’re legal currency.
The thing is, Obama couldn’t mint a trillion dollar coin and use it to fund the American Jobs Act. He can only spend money that he has in the Fed on things Congress has authorized him to spend money on. So sure, Obama could mint 16 trillion dollar coins, deposit them at the Fed, and wipe out the debt, but so could congress, and that would create massive issues in the long run.
I don’t think anyone (well, except for the MMTs) that minting a Platinum Coin is the best way to deal with our debt. They’re saying that by having a credible alternative, it’s a good way to diffuse tension over the debt ceiling.
Since when is the President allowed to spend money for any purpose? That’s a (totally different) Congressional power, which you seem to be conflating with the power to issue currency for some reason.
Uh, of course he can create money out of thin air. Any government can. It might devalue their currency at some point but it’s very possible.
IMO, Booman’s prior post on this issue is on very solid ground. It is frankly inconceivable that the federal courts (especially courts larded with young conservative white male activists posing as judges) would conclude the commemorative coin clause allows the prez (Treasury secretary) to bypass Congress’ absolute power over the purse and authorizes and permits him to have the Treasury issue more debt over Congress clear statutory objection (i.e. the “debt ceiling”). The legislative history of the coin clause would be decisive on the issue. And even if it weren’t, this interpretation would basically turn the constitution on its head—the Congress controls the purse, end of story. That’s the whole set-up of our revolution and our constitution.
As for “standing” and “political question”, those are two different doctrines. As Booman has argued, members of Congress almost always have standing to challenge executive actions. And my guess is this would be concluded to be a simple matter of statutory interpretation–what does the platinum coin clause authorize?–so Repub judges wouldn’t conclude it was a nebulous political question which they shouldn’t touch. In any event, it’s clear the Holder Justice Dept has absolutely ruled it out, so it’s an academic discussion.
The big problem here is that Obama refuses to make clear what he will do if Boner’s Boneheads refuse to allow the prez to pay all the obligations of the gub’mint. Will Obama prioritize the spending, paying debt obligations first? That’s what the 14th Amendment clearly seems to require at a bare minimum. But what gets paid after interest and principal obligations on the debt? Obama could lay out who is not gonna get paid—hint: all contracts with giant corporations will be suspended. Many US military bases, especially Southern ones, will be shuttered. Get the idea?
Or Obama could pay everything, file his own action in federal court and try to get the courts to resolve the conflict between the Congressional statutes that require the spending and the statute that restricts it–the debt ceiling. But that, I’m afraid, would be a classic “political question”.
So all legal options appear bad. That is what it means to have allowed a massive gerrymander to permanently rig the House with rightwing crazies that we can’t flush like turds. The nation is floundering, its government is in complete dysfunction and paralysis thanks to the “conservative” movement and we are all in big trouble.
At some point the world’s “investors” are gonna start figuring this simple fact out. To say that Boner’s Boneheads are playing with fire doesn’t begin to describe it. They are retarded teens playing with a nuclear weapon.
because courts aren’t supposed to consider the intent unless there is some ambiguity in the law. if the language of the law is clear, they are supposed to apply it mechanically.
that’s why legal loopholes exist. if the booman/kevin drum school of jurisprudence controlled (where courts always looked at the intent even if that meant adding language to a statute that isn’t there), most loopholes wouldn’t be possible.
plus, it would open up the courts to all kinds of weird arguments. like i could claim that the 55 speed limit does apply to me. that speed limit was created to respond to the 1970s gas crisis, when 55 happened to be the most efficient speed for a vehicle to travel. but my newfangled hybrid car doesn’t have the same efficiency peak that cars did in the 70s so limiting my speed to 55 is not what was intended. of course that doesn’t actually work. the 55 speed limit is clear. there’s no ambiguity. the original intent behind the statute doesn’t matter. if lawmakers think the restriction no longer applies because of technological improvements, they can amend the law to change the speed limit (as many, but not all, states have)
so yes, you are right that courts regularly look at the intent when interpreting a law. but again, that’s only when they are trying to interpret a law when there is some ambiguity in the language or where it is otherwise uncertain how the rules can be mechanically applied. when there is no uncertainty, there’s no need to get into intent. so generally they don’t (although given the politicized nature of the courts, i can’t be certain that some judges wouldn’t declare it illegal anyway)
I think it is a big mistake to treat the potential creation of trillions of dollars as somehow equivalent to some tax loophole challenge or even the proper way to allocate federal education dollars or the speed limit.
Set aside for a moment the fact that Congress is acting crazy and doing things that are potentially unconstitutional. Set aside that they might put the president in an untenable position where he literally cannot follow to the law and Constitution. That’s context, but it doesn’t get to the legality of minting trillion coins.
If you want to argue that the president can take extraordinary action to protect our economy, I am willing to listen. If you are going to argue that he can use the commemorative coin clause to legally circumvent the debt ceiling, I am going to disagree.
I can’t imagine any situation where someone could use a simple oversight in setting a limit to defraud someone of two or three trillion dollars.
In this case, the analogy would be that I authorized you to access my bank account to pay for girl scout cookies for our Drinking Liberally meet-ups. And you took out a trillion dollars and said that’s what you paid for them. If the contract didn’t specify that you had to pay a market price for the cookies, you’d be on perfectly sound legal ground. Right?
Of course not.
The value of commemorative coins must be a factor – they are collectors’ items not currency. Does Constitution authorize the prez/ sec treas to mint coins as currency? I don’t think so.
No, and they can’t even buy them back from you.
indeed, if treas could buy them back (presumably at denominated value) it would be acknowledging them as currency. [at market values it’s speculating in collectibles]
well, actually I think you can assign a real value to a commemorative coin and use it as legal tender. I think you could take an old commemorative quarter coin worth $2000 on the collectors’ market and get a bank to give you 25 cents for it. Maybe the post office would honor it. It’s legal tender and therefore it is currency of a type. I have no idea what this means for the scheme under consideration.
They are currency, exactly the same as any coin or bill:
31 USC § 5112 – Denominations, specifications, and design of coins:
(h) The coins issued under this title shall be legal tender as provided in section 5103 of this title.
(k) The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time.
31 USC § 5103 – Legal tender
United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.
well, first i don’t see it as “potentially unconstitutional.” congress has the right to coin money, but the platinum coin statute was passed by congress and authorizes the creation of a platinum coin. so if the president decides to mint a platinum coin, it would already be authorized by congress with a pre-existing statute.
“In this case, the analogy would be that I authorized you to access my bank account to pay for girl scout cookies for our Drinking Liberally meet-ups. And you took out a trillion dollars and said that’s what you paid for them. If the contract didn’t specify that you had to pay a market price for the cookies, you’d be on perfectly sound legal ground. Right? “
it’s not exactly the same because contracts aren’t interpreted the same way as statutes. contracts, for example, are limited by common law doctrines like the doctrine of unconscionability. statutes are not. congress is allowed to pass a law that has wacky effects, provided it doesn’t violate the constitution.
You keep going off on tangents that aren’t clarifying the situation, IMHO.
There’s no fraud, here, with the $1T coin idea.
As Krugman and others have pointed out, the Fed has taken lots of things that aren’t currency and aren’t denominated in dollars as collateral (stocks (IIRC), corporate bonds, etc.) recently. The $1T coin would be a token from the Treasury, and in response the Fed would put a $1T entry in the Treasury spreadsheet. Just like the Fed put entries of the spreadsheets of the banks.
Nobody’s going to be carrying it around in their pocket.
Of course it’s a crazy idea, but it’s within the power granted by the Congress to the Secretary of the Treasury by the plain language of the statue.
Of course, people can argue about it. That’s what lawyers do all the time – argue. 😉
I think I’m done.
Cheers,
Scott.
We are now…both sides and all factions of the UniParty…officially in Alice In Wonderland territory. Anyone who even seriously discusses this farcical answer to an equally farcical set of problems ought to be tied up, put in a hedgehog costume and used for a game of croquet by the Queen of Rabbithole World and her whole mad entourage.
Fer chrissake…when are we going to get real here?
I got yer “platinum coin”.
Right here!!!
If I want farce I’ll go watch the Three Stooges. At least they made some sense.
Later.
Much later…
AG
Money is by definition farce.
Pick and object, any object, and let’s agree that either one of us will accept in payment of an exchange or debt of the other.
What happens when one side decides to default on the deal? The very definition of bad faith.
It’s no wonder that time after time dealing with money takes on the character of farce.
I apologize if this has been linked to already, but it’s another informed opinion:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/08/1177211/-Co-author-of-platinum-coin-law-weighs-in-on-trilli
on-dollar-coin
Indeed, but we are a government of laws, not of men. Laws are what’s written, not what somebody wishes was written, regardless of who that somebody is.
Kos has the goods:
Co-author of platinum coin law weighs in on trillion dollar coin
Also, the $1 trillion available credit generated by the platinum coin, if borrowed against, would not generate dangerous inflation in the current situation. Money is currently so undervalued compared to goods and services that inflation might restore the effective interest rate to zero.
But the coin is to finance further debt, it is to offset debt already made.
In this case Duncan and Krugman are correct.
Haha! Owe me a Coke!
Noted.
There is nothing routine about minting trillion dollar commemorative coins. The largest denomination for a commemorative coin is ten dollars, and that has happened only twice.
Eh?
$100 Pt Coin.
That’s just one example.
Cheers,
Scott.
No, that’s not correct. There are many U.S. coins struck with assigned legal tender values above $10. The U.S. Mint currently issues platinum coins in $100 legal tender denominations (as well as $50 and $25) and gold coins in $50 and $25 denominations. There was a $50 coin issued all the way back in 1877. (If that coin’s face value kept pace with inflation it would be issued today at over $1000.)
But all that doesn’t matter. You’re arguing a point that has no basis in law. The clear language of the law leaves the choice of what face value(s) to assign to platinum coins entirely up to the Secretary of the Treasury at his/her discretion.
If Congress disagrees with the Treasury Secretary’s discretion then Congress can change the law — a Republican leader has introduced legislation to do just that — or impeach. Or both. But no law is broken if the Treasury Secretary decides to stamp a trillion dollar platinum coin. (Impeachment is political and is whatever Congress decides it should be.)
….And, I should add, Congress can pass a bill to change the law, but that follows normal legislative process: both the House and Senate must agree to the same language with majorities in each chamber, send the bill to the President, who can then veto the bill, and then Congress has the opportunity to override the President’s veto (or not).
Cf. “Schoolhouse! Rock”
There’s nothing routine about using the debt ceiling to take hostages either.
I’m suspecting that the President has decided to cut off any real alternatives in order to make Republicans face a cliff again.
The President has the legal authority to mint the coin. You are arguing that it might not be politic under the current circumstances. Both are correct. The political and judicial hissy-fit could be huge.
That doesn’t mean that from the point of view of economics, using coinage for government finance under a number of circumstances is not wise policy.
Virtually all fiat money was coinage for many centuries — millennia, really.
I suspect you’re right about what Obama has in mind. And I just want to point out that if progressives were pushing for a risky avoidable confrontation like that, they’d be lambasted on fora like this one for not caring about all the people who would be hurt by a government shutdown. But I guess whatever Obama does is OK by definition. (For the record, if that’s really his strategy, I’m OK with it as long as he really has the stomach to see it though- but there’s the rub.)
Although, I do find two of his arguments compelling.
However, he blithely dismisses the key point, which is that minting trillions of dollars is in no way routine or contemplated by the statute.
The only crazy sounding part of this is the idea of a ridiculously high-valued coin. The rest is just a solution to the constraints put on the US Treasury by both Congress and the Constitution.
What is the only legal solution to the apparent contradiction? A solution that in no way breaks any law?
It is for the Treasury to mint its own coins, something which is also allowed by a 1996 law, and the supposed Congressional intent of this law is something that is still under contest — it is not determined nor should it be.
I agree that courts could eventually determine that such an action contradicts the other laws which prevent the US treasury from issuing more than $300 million in United States Notes, but by the time the courts got around to making such a decision, which they very well might decide the other way as well, especially since the courts do tend to decide in favor of current, successful current government practice (Patriot Act, anyone?) as much as they do in favor of things like Congressional intent.
Why could the President not use such power to spend as much as he wants — $16 trillion, $50 trillion? Simple: Congress never authorized such expenditures. The platinum coin loophole solution in no way exceeds Congress’s already given authority to spend the $2 trillion.
Congress has also passed a law capping the issuance of currency and coinage, except for platinum coinage.
The guy who co-wrote the law, the former director of the U.S. Mint and former Treasury chief of staff, Philip Diehl, says the platinum coin is legal:
http://www.businessinsider.com/mint-the-coin-former-mint-director-philip-diehl-explains-why-the-tril
lion-dollar-coin-law-would-work-2013-1
Case CLOSED.
Also, again, there’s a fundamental failure to understand our laws with respect to federal spending. The President cannot legally spend money Congress has not appropriated and authorized. The trillion dollar platinum coin in no way changes that fact.
Fact: the U.S. Mint already generates an annual profit of about $100 million by issuing coin money. That’s $0.1B worth of Treasury bills per year that the government does not have to issue, all thanks to the U.S. Mint. Today, right now, as you tap at your keyboards in your pajamas (or whatever you wear). For platinum coins (only) Congress has granted the Treasury Secretary the unambiguous discretion to move that decimal point whenever and however he wishes.
“But that can’t possibly be!” It is exactly how it is.
So I went and read the statute. It’s worth reading the whole thing in context, as it really gives you a sense of the level of discretion given to the Treasury Secretary for this purpose compared to anything else. You can see it here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5112.
Here’s the platinum coin provision in its entirety:
“The Secretary may mint and issue platinum bullion coins and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time.”
Compare it to the first ten pages or so of the statute, which contain things like this:
“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Secretary shall mint and issue, in qualities and quantities that the Secretary determines are sufficient to meet public demand, coins which–
(1) are 40.6 millimeters in diameter and weigh 31.103 grams;
(2) contain .999 fine silver;
(3) have a design–
(A) symbolic of Liberty on the obverse side; and
(B) of an eagle on the reverse side;
(4) have inscriptions of the year of minting or issuance, and the words ;Liberty;, ;In God We Trust;, ;United States of America;, ;1 Oz. Fine Silver;, “E Pluribus Unum”, and ‘One Dollar’; and
(5) have reeded edges.”
This actually is typical – the statute prescribes the size and composition of pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, etc. The platinum coin provision is a real outlier.
There’s also this provision:
“The coins issued under this title shall be legal tender as provided in section 5103 of this title.”
Normally, statutory analysis is done by looking first at the plain meaning of the language, in the context of the larger statute. The idea is to understand the intent of the statute from the language if you can, not from outside information like legislative history. (In fact, there is a whole strain of judicial thought, espoused in particular by Justice Scalia, that says you shouldn’t look at anything outside the statute.) In this context, it’s hard to argue as a matter of statutory construction that the platinum coin provision does not give the Treasury Secretary maximum discretion – that’s what it says and it is in contrast to the level of detail in the rest of the statute. As a result, the argument that Congress, which specified the size and weight of most coins down to the thousandth of an inch and the hundredth of a gram, didn’t intend to give the Treasury Secretary discretion to do what he wanted when it came to platinum coins gets kind of tricky.
Further, the statute is quite clear that all coins minted under the statute are legal tender. It might be insane to spend that $50 gold piece you bought for $800, but it’s legal to do it and the coin must be accepted. (As others have noted, in most cases it goes the other way – the metal in the coin is worth less than the value of the coin, as it would be for the platinum coin.) In fact, coin collectors generally only want coins that are legal tender.
On top of that, there’s a doctrine in interpretation of statutes known as Chevron, which holds that the expert agency that has the job of implementing a statute is given deference when considering whether its interpretation is correct. Essentially, if there’s any ambiguity, the agency gets to choose the interpretation unless the interpretation the agency chooses is unreasonable. The argument that Congress mustn’t have meant what the statute says typically wouldn’t be successful in a Chevron context. (There’s actually a case in which a federal appeals court ruled that the statute couldn’t have meant what it said because that couldn’t have been what Congress intended and got reversed by the Supreme Court.)
What BooMan and others are saying is that, notwithstanding all of this, no court would imagine that the statute was intended to allow a trillion dollar coin. Perhaps that’s true. But consider this alternative: Suppose the Mint produced 100 million $10,000 coins, 1 billion $1,000 coins or 10 billion $100 coins. What would the courts do then? The general “silliness” argument becomes a lot less compelling, as there certainly would be markets for all of those types of coins if the government made them.
Or five $250 billion coins or whatever, as long as they’re platinum. There is no part of “quantities” and “denominations” that is unclear. They can be platinum cubes with unicorns if the Treasury Secretary wishes, although personally I’d like to see Ronald Reagan’s likeness on this(ese) particular coin(s).
That’s not quite how Chevron deference works. There might be some ambiguity as to whether or not a statute dealing almost exclusively with commemerative coins meant for collecting should be used in this way, but even if it were deemed to be unambiguous, Treasury doesn’t get complete deference in the second prong of Chevron. They still have to argue that their interpretation is reasonable (not necessarily more reasonable than another interpretation, but reasonable on its own). A court might not find it reasonable to use this statute to allow Treasury to issue a non-collectible trillion dollar coin that no one could ever afford to buy in order to get around the debt ceiling. That said, typically if the statute is found to be unambiguous in the first prong, the agency almost always wins (I think an agency lost once in the second prong analysis in the history of Chevron cases).
To be clear, I think this ought to be a Chevron Step 1 case, as the text of the statute is about as clear as it could be.
But if you get to Step 2, I’m not sure what argument there is that the interpretation is unreasonable. Someone could buy that $1 trillion coin – the Fed (or, for that matter, a crazy Middle Eastern monarch), and I have a hard time figuring out how that’s different in principle from issuing 10 billion $100 coins, especially considering that the Mint already is issuing $100 proof platinum coins that I could order today. And, considering that the whole purpose of the commemorative coin provision is to make money, it’s even consistent with the underlying premise of the statute, albeit in a strange way. It’s important to distinguish between unreasonable interpretations and weird results of reasonable interpretations, especially when it would be hard to explain where the line would have to be drawn.
All of this is in the abstract, of course, as the politics rapidly could overwhelm the legal issue here. On the one hand, the current Supreme Court is pretty hostile to the Democratic Party (or, at least 4 members are, with one in doubt); on the other hand, John Roberts is no more likely to want to be known for crashing the economy than he wanted to be known for killing the President’s signature legislative accomplishment.
Because of the sheer size of the amount of money we are talking about, and because it would alter the whole balance of powers in government, I do not think it is correct to view this case as a typical Chevron case.
In that respect, it really does remind me of Bush v. Gore, where precedent goes out the window in the interest of establishing some kind of order.
Yes, the Supreme Court would look at the plain language of the bill and then they’d look at the reasonableness factor, and then they’d look at the legislative history, and then they’d start thinking about remedies. And they might do it in an extremely expedited manner, too.
You could argue that they’d rule in Obama’s favor just to protect the economy, without any regard from precedent. Or, that they’d vote with the House Republicans also without any regard for precedent. The truth is, there would be no precedent for something so huge.
It’s rather clear that the authors of the bill did not intend to allow the Treasury to borrow money unauthorized by Congress. Nor did they want the Treasury to replace the Fed as the main issuer of currency. There really isn’t any standard of reasonableness that could meet the challenge here.
When you look at a normal case of this type, it might involve the Department of Education applying some formula that Congress thinks is inconsistent with their guidelines. But it’s not like the Dept. of Education is spending special needs funding on space travel. It’s not like the Dept. of Education is taking advantage of sloppy language to take over the jurisdiction of the Dept. of the Interior and start issuing mining permits. This is not some small level of unreasonableness. This isn’t just a matter of degree as you suggest with your analogies to small denomination coins.
It’s a raw power move that clearly violates the will of Congress and the plain intent of their legislation.
With respect, that’s all a political argument, not a legal argument. There are dozens of cases where the result of applying the law as it’s written plainly is something the legislature did not intend, and often in pretty important ways. And in this particular case, the interpretation problem would be solvable, as Congress is empowered to fix it, which further militates, as a matter of legal analysis, against an interpretation that doesn’t match up with the words of the statute.
I also suspect that your legal analysis is affected by the frame you’re putting on it that “the authors of the bill did not intend to allow the Treasury to borrow money unauthorized by Congress.” That’s right, but that’s not what would be happening, since the coin would be sold, just like the platinum coins that are being sold today.
In any event, as I noted above, this ends up being a political issue, not a real legal issue, if it happens. I agree with you that it’s impossible to predict what would happen for that reason.
I’m in favor of the trillion dollar coin because anything that makes the pukes heads explode is good. That said, this is all moot because the Republicans are going to fold and everyone in DC already knows it.
Obama doesn’t NEED the coin. I think there is a calculation, which you can question of course, that the shorter and more direct way to deal with the intransigence is simply to lay it directly before the people by refusing to countenance the very notion of negotiation over debts expressly approved by Congress.
This makes sense if you consider that Congress is attempting to dictate absolute economic terms while having no accountability, budgetary or political, for the specific shape and consequences of their power. They are demanding 2Trillion in unspecified budget cuts, approved by the Senate in advance.
They must and will be broken. Obama has announced his intention to make this case to the public, and I have abundant evidence the president can win such a fight, since HE JUST WON on taxes in the very same way. I have every reason to believe he and his team will be successful.
So if you calculate that the president can win in such a fight, it becomes doubtful that pursuing a 1T coin is necessarily the better strategy. For one thing it threatens to become a pretty theoretical constitutional question. Obama may have all the merits but still why risk a conservative judiciary and guarantee an opaque result which may take years when you have a direct and prestigious path to victory with the people?
What the republicans are doing is pretending that they can literally put the president into massive debt and then dictate the terms of resolution for that debt. They would like the President to owe for the budget not once but twice. The trick has a striking resemblance to the schemes of FIRE on the one hand and to historical practices of debt slavery on the other. To achieve this the Republicans are openly saying they can wreck the economy and spit on democracy, all on behalf of their sacred ideology (but really on behalf of their nutty plutocrat sponsors).