Automatic Debt-Ceiling Hike A Perversion Of Constitution
By Betsy McCaughey
August 4, 2011
The U.S. Constitution is the biggest casualty in the debt-ceiling deal cobbled together this week.
Generally, presidents ask Congress for a debt-ceiling hike once or twice a year, but President Obama said he wanted to avoid another debt controversy before the 2012 election. He pressed for a hike double or triple the normal duration to carry the administration through 2012.
Republican negotiators relented. The deal, as reported, raises the debt ceiling by $400 billion now, and then automatically increases it another $500 billion later this year and $1.5 trillion again in 2012.
Who is Barack Obama, the 44th president, to demand more borrowing latitude than his 43 predecessors?
The new arrangement abdicates congressional control over federal borrowing. Congress can introduce a measure to block the automatic increase, but would need a two-thirds majority in each house to override the president’s veto.
This automatic debt hike sets a dangerous precedent. Article 1 Sec.8 states that “the Congress shall have the power … to borrow money on the credit of the United States.” Every president has had to ask Congress’ permission to borrow, until 1917 requesting it for each debt issue, and since then asking for debt-ceiling hikes. Frequently, presidents have been told to make do with less or forced to make other concessions to secure Congress’s consent.
Congress has raised the debt ceiling 78 times in the last half-century, sometimes after a struggle. In 1995, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich tried to extract major spending reforms, including a plan to balance the budget, from President Bill Clinton in exchange for more borrowing. The two sides sparred for a week past the “deadline” for a hike.
The debt-ceiling battles of 1995 and 2011 are what the framers intended in devising checks and balances. The power to borrow was given to the branch of government closest to the people because it would safeguard their liberty, shielding them from excessive government demands. The automatic increases signed into law on Tuesday weaken that safeguard.
The president claims the nation’s economy is too fragile to handle another debt debate soon. Nonsense. Washington’s spending and borrowing mania is the most important issue facing voters. The federal debt topped $10.7 trillion at the end of 2008 and will pass the $14.3 trillion in days.
Even when the numbers were much smaller, Washington politicians tried to hide the debt ceiling issue to protect their own re-election. In the 1970s, federal debt doubled to over $900 billion by 1980. Members of the House of Representatives didn’t want to be seen voting for debt increases, but they didn’t want to stop spending either. So they devised the Gephardt Rule in 1979.
