A Bogus Argument on Public Debt

Mr. Garrett Epps, writing for the Atlantic, has proposed the idea that the Republican's failure to raise the U.S. public debt ceiling is a violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. He argues that the failure would cause the creditworthiness of the U.S., and thus, its debt, to be questioned, violating Section 4 of the Amendment, which says, "[t]he validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

Mr. Epps notes that he is not an economist, but is a Constitutional lawyer. As such, he is, in my opinion, a suitable representative of that group of individuals who have twisted and misused the Constitution and the Courts to bring the U.S. down to the condition we find it in today- the Courts, for example, threw out of the public arena the Bible on which the principles underlying our government were based, for fear, they said, that people would follow those principles (don't kill, don't steal, no sex outside the marriage of a man and woman, and so forth). As a result, we see flash mobs killing and stealing, abortuaries killing children, and immoral lifestyles being promoted as choices. Good for legal business, I suppose, but not for the nation.

The entire public debt dispute is an issue precisely because the Republicans in fact do not question the validity of the public debt; they assume it will actually have to be repaid. The Democrats have borrowed and spent money in the last budget year without even bothering to prepare a budget to support that borrowing.

That said, the debt limit dispute is not about the validity of the debt. It's about the acquisition of debt, on which the Constitution says nothing, except that public debt must be authorized by law. Thus, this is a bogus argument. Congress has passed a law which states how much debt is authorized. The question is whether Congress will authorize more debt, or whether the government's spending can be reined in.