It is clear now that the Obama/Reid plan to refuse negotiations — again, the GOP is asking for universal delay of ObamaCare rather than Obama’s selective waivers; and it asking that Congress be compelled to follow the law it passed, nothing more — is orchestrated and intended to move directly to the debt limit debate, which the President, his administration, progressives, the news media, academics, and leftwing law professors (but I repeat myself) are busy laying the rhetorical ground work for.
The play is this: Obama will (and already has) try to draw a distinction between the government “shutdown” (which is really nothing more than the temporary closing of non-essential governmental functions and the furloughing of employees who will be reimbursed after the shutdown for time missed) and what he’s calling an impending “economic” shutdown, which he is using to try to worry the markets, scare those who receive social security or disability benefits, etc., and gin up a Constitutional “crisis” that the left has been plotting for some time now: using the 14th Amendment (and completely inverting the INTENT of specific language), the President plans to argue — and receive intellectual and media cover — that if the House refuses to raise the debt limit, he is put into an untenable position: either he follow the Constitution and abides the House, in which case, he’ll claim, the US will “not be able to pay its bills” and will “default”; or else he must of necessity circumvent the Constitution and unilaterally raise the debt limit without Congressional authorization in order to avoid a “default” and a world-wide economic collapse. He will be lying. First, there will only be a default should Jack Lew and the President refuse to prioritize spending and pay the interest on the debt, bonds, and essential services — and monthly revenues are in excess of those payments. Meaning, revenues are in excess of any supposed lack of money to bring about default. Lew has already indicated he is willing to go this route, calling the prioritizing of spending “unworkable” — which is a falsehood, but even were it not, it should indicate to every American that the federal government has lost fiscal and economic control altogether and is simply spending until an inevitable collapse. Second, the language of the 14th amendment to which the progressives will appeal means precisely the opposite of the way they hope “reasonable people” will allow it to be interpreted: what that language demands is that, once the limit is reached, the President must sit down with Congress and negotiate on spending cuts, because he is not allowed to spend more than the Congress appropriates. The trick the left is using here, though, is this: they will intentionally conflate “authorization” with “appropriation” in order to suggest the President has been placed in an untenable position: on the one hand, they’ll argue, he is constitutionally restricted from spending money the Congress won’t grant; while on the other, they’ll claim the Congress has already authorized spending, and therefore he must spend to “meet our obligations.” At this point, he’ll declare — with the media’s support — that the lesser of two evils is to avoid a “default” and keep funding what Congress has already “authorized” in order that we may “pay our bills” and “avoid default.” But this is an intentional ruse: Congressional authorization for programs is not the same as appropriating spending to those programs; authorizing the existence of a program, for instance, does not necessitate that it always and forever be funded — or that the President is authorized to make sure it receives appropriations, even if he has to circumvent Congress to keep these programs flush going forward. The fact is, we are $17 Trillion in debt and trustees and and own government monitoring and accountability offices have told us that Social Security, Medicare, etc., are unsustainable. Increasing the amount of money we spend in deficit, and adding to the debt, is intended to facilitate an eventual economic collapse. This is Cloward-Piven playing out. Should the President receive cover to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling, the Congressional check on the Executive is gone; separation of powers is negated; and we have, in essence, a King. And the chances of the House moving to impeach an “historic” President is, under its current timid configuration, unlikely. So instead we’ll hear that a “faction” of “right wing extremists” is responsible for this unprecedented move — that the President is in fact saving us from the constitutionalists who are to be painted as fringe “anarchists” and government “arsonists.” And the GOP establishment will likely follow that same rhetorical trajectory in order to rid themselves of those interlopers — who represent some 60 million Americans — who have mucked up the federal status quo of steady government expansion and the steady shrinking of individual liberty. To fight this, we must — MUST — get the word out preemptively about what it is the progressives are maneuvering to do. It is no coincidence that Salon, the WaPo, and other media outlets have been running a steady stream of stories blaming gridlock and government “shutdowns” on the Constitution — their charge being that the Constitution irresponsibly permits a “minority” to stop a majority agenda. And while they’ll acknowledge that we’ve be taught to believe that this is a boon to liberty, really what it is is an affront to democracy (perhaps even conceding that the Framers were averse to direct democracy). Of course, the fact that the House is elected — and the GOP happens to be the majority — can be glossed over, ironically enough given aid by the GOP establishment’s constant lament that it is “only 1/2 of 1/3 of the government.” Yet it is the 1/2 of the 1/3 of the government that is charged with initiating spending and taxing — and it holds 100% of that power. So when it comes to taxing and spending, the Democrats are the minority party — and it is their failure to negotiate from that position that is responsible for gridlock, not the “fringe right wing faction” they hope to marginalize. Which is why they need to break that constraint — to breach that Constitutional check on their power. Because it is the separation of powers — and the GOP’s control of the People’s House — that is preventing them from finishing a coup in which a constitutional republic is turned into a de facto monarchy. So here’s what we must teach those who are not politically engaged: 1) the threat of a “default” is a lie, because revenues exceed interest payments and payments for essential government functions; the phrase “economic shutdown” is also a manufactured lie based around this false threat of default. 2) authorization by Congress does not give the President permission to spend. Authorization merely allows for the existence of an entity or program as approved by Congress. It doesn’t guarantee or imply a guarantee of funding. 3) appropriation is the way authorized programs and entities are funded. Before the move to CRs (without budgets) and before that, omnibus budgets (rather than individual appropriations), this was the way government was funded: by individual appropriations. We are seeing the House now attempting to fund programs using this method. But House Democrats or Senate Democrats are blocking it, hoping to bring us to the debt ceiling debate, where they wish to claim a 14th amendment directive requires that they circumvent Congress. 4) It is the job of the Treasury and the President, in the event we reach the debt ceiling, to prioritize our payments: again, we have the revenue to avoid default, so default only happens if the President and the Treasury Secretary refuse to prioritize. The language of the 14th amendment also requires that the President, having run up against a spending limit, meet with Congress to determine cuts to prospective spending so that the government does not exceed its debt limit as determined by Congress. 5) The attempt to demonize a “faction” of Americans who are arguing for fiscal responsibility and constitutional identity must be met with push back. We cannot shrink from this fight. The bottom line is this: should the President acquire the power to unilaterally raise the debt limit, a key Congressional check on Executive power is obviated. And at that point, we are no longer living in a constitutional republic. The trappings of one will be maintained. But we will be living under a despot, and the progressive coup will have been completed. What takes place after that — be it a movement within the states to hold a state convention to fight federal overreach, or something else — is anyone’s guess. But what is inarguable at that point is this: the “good man” will have completed his “fundamental transformation,” and those who gave him aid and cover are complicit in the overthrow of the US as founded. Honestly, if I could find a 300million person mailing list, I’d send this out to everyone on it. But alas, I’m not the IRS or the NSA. So you all are going to have to teach your friends, acquaintances, family members, etc., about what is going on, and you’re going to have to show them how to identify and rebuke the sophistry of the academics, the media, and the administration — as well as complicit statist Republicans — if we have any chance of resisting what is essentially the move that will end the republic as founded. ****
(For more on all this — including a rebuke to those “nuanced” GOPers who have insisted that Obama the man is not bad, rather his policies are — download Mark Levin’s Oct 3 podcast.)
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