Biden can, and should, ignore the GOP's debt suicide attempt

[usonian]

3. More from the above

In 1974, Congress took charge of the federal budgeting process in a way it had not done before. The precipitant was “The Imperial Presidency” of Richard M. Nixon, who had developed a worrying penchant for regularly impounding — that is, refusing to spend — funds that Congress had appropriated for specifically authorized federal programs. In effect, Nixon had been flouting both Congress’s Article I “power of the purse,” of which some commentators make pointlessly heavy weather, and the Constitution’s own Article II “take care” clause, pursuant to which the president must “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

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Lest there be any doubt on this score, we suggest that conservatives note how the current incarnation of the no longer meaningful (since 1974) Liberty Bond Act of 1917 is a would-be freestanding ceiling whose disregard leaves in place all sections of Title 31 that authorize needed borrowing — per the U.S. Code Subchapter I, sections 3102 through 3106. Conservative critics are accordingly dead wrong again, be it deliberately or inadvertently, in suggesting that we and others are proposing the president borrow without congressional authority. 

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We say it because this isn’t about “Biden versus Congress,” or even about “Biden versus the MAGA faction of the House Republican Caucus,” at all. It’s about that minority faction versus … Congress itself.

Let’s cure this schizophrenia now. President Biden, Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and all reasonable Republicans should kindly call the MAGA conservatives’ bluff. Simply ignore the 1917 vintage debt ceiling, which is now null and void, and abide by the 1974 budget law. You will be vindicating our Constitution and preserving our constitutional republic in so doing.

The authors say that Biden is trying to avoid exercising a line-item veto — that is, ”prioritizing” repayments as some MAGA Republicans have demanded. I vaguely remember line-item vetoes --- seems that I had other priorities at the time they were in the news.