"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law ... shall not be questioned

[CousinIT]

The law supporting the “Debt Ceiling” derives from the 1917 “Liberty Bond” Act, passed to facilitate and control payment for US entry into World War 1, but ignored until Newt Gingrich resurrected it for blackmail purposes in the 1990s.

OTOH: The 14th Amendment to the Constitution states: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law ... shall not be questioned."

All appropriations laws now in effect direct Congress to incur public debt to purchase and pay for everything the federal government does.

So the 1917 law conflicts with both the Constitution and scores of laws passed in the 2010s and 2020s directing payment of everything appropriated by the federal government (social security, defense, infrastructure, minor stuff like that).

So No. 1 — the 1917 Law is unconstitutional because it questions to validity of US public debt as prohibited by the 14th Amendment.

But even if that were not so, if the 1917 law prohibits payment for Congressionally appropriated programs, it conflicts with every law authorizing those programs.

What do you do when two laws conflict? This article by the great Robert Hockett, Stop the Charade: The Federal Budget Is Its Own ‘Debt-Ceiling’ lists a bunch of reasons why the appropriations laws must prevail over the 1917 law. Here are just two:

Stopping payment for spending already incurred under current law based on a supposed 1917 Law leads to an absurd result: Under fundamental law, if “there is literally no possible rational interpretation, the putative ‘law’ in question [i.e., the 1917 Act] is treated as a nullity.”

In conflicts of laws, the more recently passed laws take precedence: “where two legislative enactments appear to conflict, the later enactment will be read as implicitly repealing the earlier one – at least as applied in any manner that yields conflict.”

President Biden and the US Treasury are bound by the more recent law and the law that leads to the only rational result. President Biden can tell the House, “The Law and the Constitution bind me to pay for debts Congress has appropriated. We intend to pay these debts as directed by law.”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/22/2148648/-No-Need-to-Mint-the-Coin-The-Debt-Ceiling-Law-is-Unconstitutional-and-Void

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rhockett/2023/01/19/stop-the-charade-the-federal-budget-is-its-own-debt-ceiling/?sh=45602b4b7bc9

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. This has been brought up before.

Full disclosure: IANAL.

Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

{snip}

Section 4: Validity of public debt

Section 4. 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. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 4 confirmed the legitimacy of all public debt appropriated by the Congress. It also confirmed that neither the United States nor any state would pay for the loss of slaves or debts that had been incurred by the Confederacy. For example, during the Civil War several British and French banks had lent large sums of money to the Confederacy to support its war against the Union. In Perry v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court ruled that under Section 4 voiding a United States bond "went beyond the congressional power."

The debt-ceiling crises of 2011 and 2013 raised the question of what the President's authority under Section 4 is. During the 2011 crisis, former President Bill Clinton said he would invoke the Fourteenth Amendment to raise the debt ceiling if he were still in office, and force a ruling by the Supreme Court. Some, such as legal scholar Garrett Epps, fiscal expert Bruce Bartlett and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have argued that a debt ceiling may be unconstitutional and therefore void as long as it interferes with the duty of the government to pay interest on outstanding bonds and to make payments owed to pensioners (that is, Social Security and Railroad Retirement Act recipients). Legal analyst Jeffrey Rosen has argued that Section 4 gives the President unilateral authority to raise or ignore the national debt ceiling, and that if challenged the Supreme Court would likely rule in favor of expanded executive power or dismiss the case altogether for lack of standing. Erwin Chemerinsky, professor and dean at University of California, Irvine School of Law, has argued that not even in a "dire financial emergency" could the President raise the debt ceiling as "there is no reasonable way to interpret the Constitution that [allows him to do so]." Jack Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law at Yale University, opined that like Congress the President is bound by the Fourteenth Amendment, for otherwise, he could violate any part of the amendment at will. Because the President must obey the Section 4 requirement not to put the validity of the public debt into question, Balkin argued that President Obama would have been obliged "to prioritize incoming revenues to pay the public debt, interest on government bonds and any other 'vested' obligations. What falls into the latter category is not entirely clear, but a large number of other government obligations—and certainly payments for future services—would not count and would have to be sacrificed. This might include, for example, Social Security payments."

{snip}

[PortTack]

2. Thx for posting! this hostage taking over the debt ceiling is a non starter. They never seem to

Learn from history.

[UTUSN]

3. K&R