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| Republicans are willing to cut Medicare and Social Security to appease their extremists |
My lead piece in today’s posting was supposed to
be about the Republican effort in the House to refuse to raise the debt limit
(something like raising the maximum limit on a credit card), a process which
enables the Treasury Department to sell bonds and issue notes to acquire the
money to pay the government’s bills. This
happens, whether you agree with it or not, every year, regardless of what Party
is calling the shots. We reach that debt
ceiling next week. Fortunately, there are strategies that the Treasury will use to buy a few months more time!
Uncle Sam is known as someone who pays his bills,
and that includes paying interest on the debt. That’s why government bonds are
highly rated. Investors, here and
abroad, trust Uncle Sam. But the
Republican House majority plans on allowing the debt limit to be raised only
if there are balancing cuts in spending, specifically in Social Security and
Medicare benefits and military aid to Ukraine. That is bad news for Ukrainians,
and even worse for Americans, even though a Democratic Senate or a presidential
veto can torpedo such G.O.P. dreams.
Retired lawyer Marty London produces an occasional
blog and he deals with this issue (he calls it ‘Scary Shit’) in a current
posting. So, here it is, stated far
better than I could do it. Welcome to ‘Marty’s
Blog’:
12 JANUARY 2023
SCARY SHIT
Marty London
We are witnessing one
of the more troublesome electoral periods in modern times. A fractured
Republican party that still has not given up the ghost of Trumpian
“leadership”, needed 15 separate votes to elect a Speaker, and finally
succeeded only after the leading candidate made a series of humiliating
promises to a small group of hard-right conservatives. Some of the promises are
in writing; others are reported be "hand-shake" undertakings known to
but a few in the "Freedom Caucus."
The issue that causes
the most discussion in the press is the threat by some of the in the hard right
group to balance the budget by reducing Social Security and Medicare payments.
It's hard to believe the Republicans would tinker with Social Security, also
known as "the third rail of politics" but they seem to be doing it
anyway. Polls show 82% population is opposed to any such move.
The scheme goes like
this: each year the government passes legislation establishing a new debt
limit. It is, as expected, traditionally higher than the previous debt limit.
Republicans assert this is improvident, and insist on capping the debt limit,
despite the fact that the last time they were in power they skyrocketed the
public debt via dramatic reductions in tax rates for the wealthy.
Obviously, there are
fundamentally two ways to balance a budget: you either increase revenue ( i.e.,
raise taxes) or cut spending. Republican leadership (to the extent there is
such a thing) has focused on the latter – specifically military spending (think
Ukraine) and welfare services such as Social Security and Medicare.
I have read more than
one article that suggests this is all much ado about nothing because any such
legislation passed by the House would fail in the Senate or be vetoed by Biden.
But those writers miss
the point. The Republican plan is a repeat of the hostage-taking exercise the
hard right used in the Speaker election. Instead of passing a bill reducing
those expenses – a bill that would certainly fail – the plan is to refuse to
raise the debt ceiling. In the past negotiations have always yielded a
compromise. But one of the terms of the McCarthy hostage-taking is said be that
the new Speaker refuse any agreement on the debt ceiling
issue unless the Democrats agree to reduce spending on the military
budget, Social Security, and Medicare.
A failure of a
three-branch compromise would cause a shut-down of the government. Arguably,
the Treasury would not be able to pay its bills. Hospitals, physicians, Social
Security recipients would not get their checks, (and the Ukrainians would not
get their howitzers).
But
this is not as simple as it sounds. Government spending is different from
household spending. Government spending is dictated by previously enacted
legislation and by the Constitution of the United States.
The legislature has,
over the years gone, enacted legislation establishing Social Security and
Medicare at specified rates. That makes it a government debt. The Constitution
has something to say about government debt. The 14th Amendment, Section 4 reads, "The
validity of the public debt
of the United States, authorized by law, … shall not be questioned."
Can the obligation of
the Treasury to pay out Social Security and Medicare “as authorized by law”
simply be negated by the will of the hostage takers? Not so fast. A number of
Constitutional scholars have opined that the Treasury would be Constitutionally
obliged to pay legislatively authorized Medicare and Social Security debt
whether such payments exceeded the debt limit or not.
If, as I expect, the
administration insists on poking a hole in the debt ceiling to make Social
Security and Medicare payments, we will for sure have a court battle. I have
little doubt the political views
of the majority of this Supreme Court would result in a Court ruling
against making those Social Security and Medicare payments.
That would, I suggest,
raise an interesting question that, so far as I have read, has not been
addressed by scholars.
Some history: In 1832,
there was a legal dispute about whether the State of Georgia had the right to
decide whether white men could reside on Indian territory. The case went to the
Supreme Court. The State of Georgia took the view that inasmuch as the Indian
territory was within its boundaries, only the state had jurisdiction, and
refused even to appear in the Supreme Court. The Supremes took the opposite
view, and Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the Court’s opinion ruling against
Georgia’s position. President Andrew Jackson, upon learning of the
decision, is reported to have said “John Marshall has made his decision, now
let him enforce it."
So I cannot help but
wonder whether or not this would be an occasion to give this Supreme Court,—
which has the lowest public approval rating anyone can recall, — the black eye
it deserves.
What if the
conservative majority of the Court ruled that the Constitutional sentence quoted
above does not apply to these circumstances and the Treasury could not cut the
checks?
 |
| Treasury Secretary Yellin will do what the 14th Amendment allows her to do. |
And then what if the
Secretary of the Treasury, with the full approval of the President of the
United States, said, “I have a Constitutional obligation under the 14th
amendment to pay out Social Security and Medicare debts to citizens. I am going
to do my duty and make those payments. Samuel Alito has made his decision,
now let him enforce it.”
The result? After
November, 2024 we would no longer need to worry about Kevin McCarthy!
A bientot!
JL
* *
* *
Believers in the Insurrection
We should not forget the insurrection that took
place on January 6, 2021. Recently,
Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago was
reported to have led a research project looking into what motivated the
protestors. Although they found that there were other factors involved, the
researchers concluded that race ‘accounted for as much as 75% of the energy
underneath the insurrection movement.’
They investigated further, looking for reasons why
many Americans who were not there with the protestors in Washington on
January 6, agreed with them. They came
up with the following numbers:
Twenty-one million Americans believe that (1) Joe Biden stole the election, and
that (2) violence would be justified to restore the defeated former president
to power. The researchers identified two
conspiracy theories underlying this dual belief.
Half of this large group (perhaps 10 million) believed
that ‘a secret group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles was running the country’
and three-quarters (perhaps 15 million) believed in the ‘great replacement
theory,’ whereby white Americans are intentionally being supplanted by people
of color.
Without more information as to the methodology of this
research, it should not be taken
as being conclusive but certainly, at
a minimum, it does show that there are
millions of Americans out there whose judgement is highly questionable. And they vote,
almost always for Republicans.
Not touched upon, and what worries me, are the
numbers of those in law enforcement at all levels, including the Secret Service
and the FBI, as well as in the military, who share such questionable beliefs.
That can be very dangerous for the survival of democracy.
JL
* * * *
|
* Have you been
following Professor Richardson each day?
I recommend that you do! Check
her out at (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/) and if you like what you read, pass it on to
others.
JL
* * *
A Santos Solution
If half a dozen Republican representatives, including those in neighboring districts who have already asked for Santos' resignation, walked into Kevin McCarthy's office and told him that this faker's presence in Congress stains their entire party, hurting its re-election chances and that they would no longer vote with the Republican majority in the House until he is gone, ending their thin majority there, watch how fast he would be gone. McCarthy buckled under to his Freedumb Caucus antagonists. He should buckle under pressure from his supporters, as such a group of representatives would likely be.
JL
* * *
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