Let's assume Boehner & co. NEVER back down. What options does Obama have? [View all]

[pffshht]

This is a hostage situation. Boehner is the head terrorist, making demands. Currently the place is surrounded, it's already a given that he's going down one way or another. And he has announced that at midnight (in this analogy, the debt default doomsday two weeks from now) they are going to start shooting the hostages.

But until then, the cops are still trying to reason with him and get him to turn himself in peacefully. That would continue until late in the eleventh hour, at which point the hostage negotiator puts down the megaphone and the SWAT commandos and rooftop snipers are given the signal to do their stuff.

I just want to know what form Obama's metaphorical SWAT team will take. All he's publicly said is that he's not giving them anything, ever, so they need to give up. But so far there has been no "or else."

Suppose neither side is willing to negotiate. Now it's a year later, the government is still shut down and continuing to default on its debts. No, of course that isn't going to happen. So the President can- and, if forced to, must do Something sooner or later.

Will he abolish the debt ceiling by executive order, saying he is required to by the 14th amendment?
Mint a pocketful of trillion dollar platinum coins?
Declare the stalemate a constitutional crisis, and have a constitutional convention to amend the procedural rules of congress in such a way that this cannot ever happen again?
Order Boehner to step down or be charged with contempt of Congress and removed from the premises?

What form do you think the Executive Banhammer will most likely take?

Anything he does along those lines is of course going to have the Rush Limbaugh / Fox News / Freeper crowd shitting I-beams and going full Alex Jones about how he's seizing imperial power and the next thing they know the UN troops are going to be going door to door taking their guns and throwing them in FEMA death camps, etc.

That's probably why there has been no public discussion of what is going to happen if & when Boehner decides he can just sit on the CR until he is no longer able to sit, and the economy be damned. I'm certain there has been plenty of behind-the scenes discussion, though; and maybe Obama just likes to hold his cards close.