Please forgive me for a short diary. I shouldn't be writing one at all given the time I don't have however, I just received an email from The Peace Team via The Pen.
It seems there is a law which guarantees that the Federal Government will pay its debts.
31 USC CHAPTER 31 - PUBLIC DEBT
If this is accurate, could someone please explain to me how this got by all our representatives in D.C.? If it is accurate, is this not the Shock Doctrine taken to a new level?
There has been some talk that the President can act unilaterally to
raise the nation debt limit based on Section 4 of the 14th Amendment
to the Constitution, which provides in pertinent part that "The
validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law .
. . shall not be questioned". The argument has been made that since
Congress has ALREADY authorized BY LAW each obligation represented in
the national debt, by appropriating the funds for various
expenditures, any overall "debt limit" is artificially redundant. It
would be like writing a bunch of checks and then refusing to deposit
the funds in your account to cover them. While a constitutional
challenge of the debt limit law may be a defensible argument in the
spirit of the 14th Amendment it is not unequivocally compelling, as
the 14th Amendment does not expressly authorize what proponents are
asking the President to do.
President Must Invoke 31 USC 3102 Action Page:
http://www.peaceteam.net/...
With this context, it is astonishing that apparently nobody has
bothered to read the text of Public Debt Law of 1941 itself, embodied
in 31 USC 3101, which is what codifies a national debt limit. That
law states that
"The face amount of obligations issued under this chapter and the
face amount of obligations whose principal and interest are
guaranteed by the United States Government (except guaranteed
obligations held by the Secretary of the Treasury) may not be more
than [some arbitrary huge number] . . . "
Please take careful note of the words "EXCEPT guaranteed obligations
held by the Secretary of The Treasury". By undeniably clear law as
passed by Congress, such obligations are NOT constrained by any
so-called debt limit. Now all you have to do is run your finger down
to the very next section 31 USC 3102 [Bonds] and you will read
"With the approval of the President, the Secretary of the Treasury
may borrow on the credit of the United States Government amounts
necessary for expenditures authorized by law . . . "
By this section Congress gives the President the EXPRESS, inherent
and unilateral authority to direct the Secretary of the Treasury to
incur obligations to cover all expenditures authorized by law, which
is to say the sum of the appropriations bills Congress has already
passed. And as we have just so clearly demonstrated such obligations
are immune from any so-called debt ceiling limitation. Surely there
is some White House attorney smart enough to figure this all out as
we have. My emphasis
The President must invoke this authority now, as he is fully
empowered to do by 31 USC 3102. And then Congress needs to get
serious about raising the revenues to pay its bills, and not just on
the backs of poor people.
And here is the Facebook link for the President Must Invoke 31 USC
3102 action page further above.
[Facebook] Action Page:
http://apps.facebook.com/...
And this is the Twitter reply for this same action
@cxs #p1082