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Terrible idea.


Yes, there is a Constitutional obligation to honor the debt authorized by law -- i.e., to acknowledge it as legitimately the government's debt. It does not imply an obligation to repay it at all (i.e., Congress could by law repudiate the debt), much less to repay it on time.


Even if it did imply such an obligation, it would not justify disregarding the debt ceiling -- the vast majority of our current spending is for non-debt related expenditures, and the portion accounted for by debt service is relatively small. Thus even if we hit the debt ceiling we can continue to make debt service payments.


And even if it were the case that the Constution requires that the debt be repaid (and it doesn't), there is also a Constitutional requirement that the President obey the law, not arbitrarily and without court injunction disregard the ones he doesn't like. Suppose Congress passes and he signs a $10 trillion budget, only to find the bond markets won't play along. Does this excuse him from every possible law that would forbid him from raising $10 trillion in revenues? That would be absurd.


If Obama did this, it would be a recipe for legal and constitutional crisis. It would tank his Presidency. If nothing else, as has already been said, it would be an impeachable offense. And all so what, a few hundred thousand federal employees can keep drawing paychecks? So we can deny, for a few more weeks, the fact that the economy sucks and that it's been levitating for years on economic bubbles and, most recently, deficit spending?


Not to mention, the big worry here is not hitting the debt ceiling (again, we can in fact afford to live within our means -- our tax revenue is sufficient to make most entitlement payments and all of our debt service payments) but failing to lower our debt-to-GDP ratio. Actually even that's not necessary; S&P has said all that's necessary to avoid a downgrade is a mere $400 billion cut in deficit spending, and we can't even agree to that.


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