<snip>
The press so far has been asking whether the debt ceiling is constitutional.
The correct question they should ask is whether the Republican strategy of hostage taking violates the Constitution. It does.You may ask: what good is saying that the Republicans are acting unconstitutionally if President Obama is unwilling to threaten to raise the debt ceiling by himself? The question answers itself:
If the public believes that the Republican Party is violating the Constitution and the President is defending the Constitution, that puts a different sort of pressure on Republicans.The problem that the Obama Administration faces, in my view, is that it has not made this constitutional claim early enough and often enough in the past several months. Instead, the President has proceeded in public as if there are no hostages, and therefore there is no unconstitutional threat. The President may believe that this approach will make it easier for him ultimately to strike a deal. But if the public believes that the Republicans are violating the Constitution, and that as a result the economy is about to collapse, this would seem to give him a bargaining advantage of a different kind.
Moreover, by not denouncing the Republican strategy now on constitutional grounds, President Obama virtually guarantees that this same hostage taking strategy will be used repeatedly whenever a House of Congress controlled by one party wants to stick it to a White House controlled by the other. Indeed, one can expect that the Republican Party will continue to use this very same strategy as soon as the next debt ceiling is reached, for if it made President Obama roll over the first time, why not try it again and again? <snip>
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/07/secretary-geithner-understands.html<snip>
Suppose, however that neither (1) (2) or (3) is the case: he has no other legal fail safe and despite market warnings and concerns about Social Security checks, Congress is so hamstrung that it cannot act and he does not believe that it will act in time, as the U.S. economy (and the world economy) melts down. At that point,
I expect his views on the constitutional option will change rather quickly.However, Obama does not want to cross that bridge until he comes to it. Nor does he want to signal--or even hint--what he would do if he came to that bridge. That is why he making these public statements.
You should keep this in mind as you try to understand why Obama seems to be ignoring the life preserver of section 4 that people to his political left keep pointing to in ever more urgent terms. It is not that he doesn't see it. It is rather that he is deliberately rejecting it. For now.
You should also understand, however, that both Congress and the President have a constitutional duty to prevent the validity of the federal debt from being questioned. Obama is not simply making a constitutional argument; he is also playing a political game. He believes that Congress is acting irresponsibly and he is acting responsibly, and that time is on his side. Nevertheless, his constitutional duty is to prevent the validity of the federal debt from being questioned even if Congress is acting irresponsibility and even unconstitutionally. At some point, his underlying constitutional obligation to preserve the Republic must overcome his political desire to win. Certainly that point would be reached if the economy begins to melt down and Congress is politically paralyzed. Then he must act.<snip>
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-obama-wont-invoke-section-4.html
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