Left And Right Politics

As the debt ceiling talks continue to deteriorate into nothing more than school yard standoff, Many democrats are pushing for President Obama to bypass Congress and cite a small provision in the 14th Amendment. The section the Democrats are referring is in Section 4.

Section 4. 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. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Of course they only recite the first sentence of the section. As the text is written, yes, the United States does have an obligation to pay all debts. As any responsible adult should, so should the country/government . The problem I have with the Democrats and the Obama Administration is that they easily omit the most important part of the 14 amendment (in my opinion), Section 5 which reads…

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

I can see why the president and the Democrats in Congress would want to ignore (or fail to mention) section 5. Because as it reads, the legislation branch holds the power of the 14th amendment, which is Congress, not the president. If Obama does overstep his boundaries of the executive branch of the federal government to raise the debt ceiling without the appropriate bil from Congress, it will be an impeachable political move. Obama has said (as well as the media), that he is a Constitutional scholar and understands the Constitution better than anyone. If that’s the case then he also knows the truth about this section and will not enact it. Obama and his aides know that he lacks the Constitutional power to do so, but that doesn’t mean the the Democrats and others alike aren’t pushing for him to change his mind.

So since we’re looking at the 14th Amendment, let’s look at Section 3 for just a moment…

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

As the text reads, neither the president, vice-president or any member of Congress shall engage in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution or given aide or comfort to an enemy of the document. So I guess our executive and most of the legislative are already in violation of this amendment. The Health Care bill, Cap and Trade are just two of the most recent violations against the Constitution, I won’t even try to go back as far as 30 years where there were so many other violations we can consider.

With only a week to go before the August 2nd debt ceiling deadline, nether the Democrats or the Republicans can come to some sort of an agreement as to what to do to save the country from defaulting on it’s debt. Both side are more concerned with next year’s election than actually doing what is necessary to cut the deficit.

There are billions of dollars being spent on programs that do nothing to increase jobs in America or to raise GDP. Instead of talking about those items, both parties are using scare tactics about Social Security and Medicare. Two things that will get the American voter engaged in doing something next year at the booth.

At the same time, the Democrats are feeling the pressure from the labor unions telling the Dems to stand firm on Social Security and Medicare. While I strongly believe in keeping the benefits of the two programs in place, there are other areas of the programs that can be cut. Such as administration costs of the program. We all know that government offices have to many employees in each of the different offices. They can not tell us that there is no way to cut at least 15-20% of staff within each of the programs. Most of the system is automated and to have so many employees in the system is taxing on the program itself.

The federal government has known about this issue for months now and have touched on the subject, but they wait until now to really get involved in it. Why is it that they wait until the last minute to do something? It’s because with the pressure of time, they can push the bill through quickly and claim later on that they didn’t realize what was in the bill since they didn’t get adequate amount of time to go through it. Of course the American people have short-term memory and forget that they waited and that’s what the politicians hope for, so they can do it again.

So as we see the politicians are trying to draft anything to get a majority of the politicians to vote yes on extending the debt. The Republicans in the House of Representatives have unveiled a two-tier plan that will cut $1.2 trillion over a ten year period and will only raise the debt ceiling for a few months. Obama has already expressed that he will not sign it because it’s a temporary fix.

Meanwhile the Democrats have presented their own plan to cut @2.7 trillion over the next ten years, but with a debt limit hike that will carry it through the 2012 elections. An election where Obama and many lawmakers will be up for re-election.

As we see over the last decade that the situation is getting worse as in the politicians doing what is necessary to get the fiscal condition of this country back in order. It’s always a temporary fix and not a permanent one. Each time the debt ceiling has come into play, politicians never cut the spending that is needed, instead they draft plans that cut spending in the future, not in the present. What happens is the cuts never come, but the spending and the raising of taxes always do.

We are coming to the end of the fuse and if we, the American people don’t do something to change the mindset of Washington, we will be finished sooner than later. This has gone on for way to long and it will come to an end one way or another.

……unless of course it’s comes to the fact of giving themselves raises or going on vacation.

When it comes to anything other than those two issues, Congress and the Administration can not work together. It’s been going on for over three months (actually longer, but I’m just talking the major push of it all) and still to this day the Obama Administration can’t even come up with their own plan. All they want to do is point fingers at the Republicans coming up with “insane” ideas, and not being cooperative.

It’s gotten to the point where the credit rating company, Standard & Poors is looking to downgrade the U.S. rating on the grounds that they (Federal government) are politically divided. In October, S&P said that the U.S. fiscal issues won’t affect anything in three to five years from now. Then in April, they changed their outlook to being a three to one chance that there will be debt issues within two years. Well now, S&P are looking at a 50% chance of a downgrade since Congress and Obama are too divided to really give confidence to the rating company.

Obama and the Democrats in the Senate have said that they will not pass a bill that won’t allow the federal government to raise the debt ceiling. The Republicans in the House have presented a bill, Cut, Cap and Balance, but the left doesn’t like it. Why? Because they didn’t write it. Well, not really, they feel that they will have to raise the debt ceiling again as well as they’re not too happy about cutting programs that have brought them the votes they’ve wanted in the past. They’re also thinking of the election next year.