If there was ever one Constitutional amendment that has been more abused than any other, it is the 14th. The 14th Amendment was designed to ensure that ex-slaves and their progeny would be given equal protection and due process under individual STATE LAW, and to ensure the federal government honored its debts incurred during the War of Northern Aggression.
The 14th has been used and abused by the federal judiciary in order to expand federal control over state governments, rendering the 10th Amendment meaningless. The failure of our immigration system can be directly tied to the misguided interpretation of the 14th. And the aiding and abetting of illegal aliens by judicial mandate has overburdened and in some cases have led to the bankruptcy of municipalities.
Now, we have U.S. Senators using this amendment for specious purposes:
Delaware Sen. Chris Coons told The Huffington Post this week that he's part of a group of lawmakers now examining whether, in the case that debt negotiations fail, the Treasury could ignore Congress and continue paying its bills on time.
"This is an issue that's been raised in some private debate between senators as to whether in fact we can default, or whether that provision of the Constitution can be held up as preventing default," Coons told Huffington Post reporters Ryan Grim and Samuel Haass. "[I]t's going to get a pretty strong second look as a way of saying, 'Is there some way to save us from ourselves?' "
And on what basis are they making this argument?
Critics of the debt limit cite the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which states: "the 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." (Emphasis ours)
Here we have legal scholars rewriting history in order to legitimize this new kind of tyranny:
Legal scholar Garrett Epps, writing in The Atlantic in April, said that a case could easily made for simply ignoring the congressionally mandated debt limit.
"This provision makes clear that both the monies our nation owes to bondholders, and the sums promised in legislation to those receiving pensions set by law from the federal government, must be paid regardless of the political whims of the current congressional majority," Epps wrote.
In essence, Epps argues that Obama should stand before Congress and say, Tough luck--the Constitution says we can't default. Epps argued that in the event that Congress does not act, Obama should (and could) instruct the Treasury Department to issue "binding debt instruments on the world market sufficient to cover all the current obligations of the United States government, even in default of Congressional action to meet those obligations."
Are we in rebellion? Did we have an insurrection? Were the debts run up by Congress these past 80 years used to squash a civil war? Did I miss something?
This must be one of those progressive “living and breathing Constitution” arguments again. A Constitution that means nothing and applies to everything an authoritative body can conjure up.
We must repeal the 14th Amendment if we are ever to control this monster from that bureaucratic swamp in Washington D.C...
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