Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Is There a Big Loophole in the Debt Ceiling Deal that Will For All Practical Purposes Eliminate the Ceiling Forever?

Attorney Robert Willmann, Jr emails:
I decided to listen to "Senators" Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell talk on the Senate floor about the "deal" on the debt ceiling. Watching Reid read his vaguely worded statement, and hearing McConnell's equally vague statement, it will be necessary to read the fine print in the law
the Senate, and probably the House, will pass, that concerns the debt ceiling.

The government will be "funded" until January 15, 2014, and the debt ceiling will be raised
until early February.

Is the debt ceiling being raised by a certain dollar amount or not?

The key question is whether next February Congress has to again vote affirmatively to raise the debt ceiling, or whether this "deal" has an automatic debt ceiling increase built in, or lets president Obama raise it by executive fiat, and Congress would have to disapprove of the debt ceiling increase by a veto-proof majority in both the House and Senate.

If the wording of the expected law requires Congress to block a raise in the debt ceiling by a veto-proof vote, there will be no more debt ceilings and the total federal debt can increase until something crashes or it becomes politically fashionable or necessary to again have a potentially enforceable debt ceiling.

1 comment:

  1. Harry Reid stated that anarchists were taking over the government; he was referring to the Tea Partiers and libertarians as if they were trying to get rid of the rule of law. Wouldn't eliminating the debt ceiling constitute his version of anarchy?

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