While speaking at a Tea Party event in Charleston, SC, Rep. Tim Scott (R-SC) said that if President Obama tries to bypass Congress to borrow beyond the debt limit, he would consider it an "impeachable act."
Scott said it would be "catastrophic" if the President tried to "usurp the entire system set up by our Founding Fathers over something this significant."
According to Scott, the idea is "silly", but he said "there is a tad bit of truth to it."
"This president is looking to usurp congressional oversight to find a way to get it done without us," he said.
According to an article at The Hill:
"I think we find ourselves in the biggest war of all time if he does that, if he even tries to do that," Scott said in a video posted at the local news website West Ashley Patch.
But Scott went even further, saying that there would be "a revolt among the American people" if Obama did an end run around Congress.
At issue is whether the President can use a clause in the 14th Amendment to bypass Congress and unilaterally extend the Treasury Department's borrowing authority.
The 14th amendment reads, in part, that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law ... shall not be questioned.”
According to the Washington Post:
The constitutional provision at issue — Section 4 of the 14th Amendment — is a post-Civil War invention. The North had borrowed heavily to finance the Civil War, and it wanted to make sure that the Southern states reintegrating into the Union wouldn’t try to shed responsibility for the nation’s debt.
“The purpose of that clause was to prevent the political branches from using default or repudiation as a political threat,” said Jack Balkin, a constitutional law professor at Yale Law School. “It was designed to prevent this kind of gamesmanship.”
The Administration has been tight-lipped about the possibility of Obama's use of the 14th Amendment, and the President dodged a question on the so-called "solution" at the Twitter town hall held Wednesday.
“I don’t think we should even get to the constitutional issue,” he said.
On Tuesday, conservative talk show host Mark Levin said Obama should be impeached if he tried such a move:
If Barack Obama attempts to destroy the Separation of Powers doctrine, if he intends to seize Congressional power when it comes to borrowing and spending despite the plain wording of Article 1 Section 8 Clause 2. In other words if he’s going to violate his oath of office…then he needs to be impeached.
Not all Democrats are on board with the idea, however.
Dave Weigel writes at Salon:
"I think it would cause a great crisis in our democracy" if debt was created without a rise in the debt limit, Frank told economist Bruce Bartlett, a former Republican who has been talking up the "constitutional option." Frank simply didn't see a way for this to work, and warned of political disaster.
"The anger in the country, the political bitterness and the vitriol, would be amplified," he said, "and you'd let people off the hook for their irresponsibility."
A post at the conservative blog Hot Air notes:
Indeed, and yet I haven’t seen liberal legal experts so excited about an idea since the last round of the “Commerce Clause lets us do anything we want” debate. You know, I’ve been blogging long enough to remember a time when the left was all about using legislative power to check an executive who fancied himself endowed with monarchical constitutional powers. Which is to say, I’ve been blogging for more than two and a half years. Ah well. The One did promise us Change.
-----------------------------------------------------------
If you like this article, you can follow Joe on Twitter @jnewby1956, visit his Facebook page, or click the Subscribe button to receive email updates when a new article is published.
Comments