{"id":17134,"date":"2013-01-13T07:05:21","date_gmt":"2013-01-13T12:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=17134"},"modified":"2013-01-13T07:05:21","modified_gmt":"2013-01-13T12:05:21","slug":"trying-to-win-the-media-war-instead-of-governing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=17134","title":{"rendered":"Trying To Win The Media War Instead Of Governing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The basis of the American republic is the U. S. Constitution<\/a>. It serves as a guide to governing the nation.. We ask the President and Congress to swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution when they take office. It is a little disconcerting when our elected officials seem to forget or ignore this oath.<\/p>\n

Yesterday John Hinderaker<\/a> at Power Line<\/a> posted an article which illustrates an apparent lack of knowledge of the Constitution by some of the leaders of the Democrat<\/a> party. Senators Harry Reid<\/a>, Dick Durbin, Patty Murray and Chuck Schumer<\/a> have written a letter to President Obama<\/a> asking him to take all \u201clawful steps\u201d to increase the debt ceiling–with or without the Republicans. They are fully entitled to write that letter, and they are fully entitled to their opinion, but do they have any idea what the U. S. Constitution says?<\/p>\n

This is the letter (from the website Scribd<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This letter is political theater. Either the Senators who wrote it have not read the U. S. Constitution or they don’t understand it.<\/p>\n

John Hinderaker at Power Line takes a closer look at the letter. Some of his comments:<\/p>\n

Why are they talking about default? Default is constitutionally prohibited by the 14th Amendment. The federal government\u2019s cash flow is more than ample to pay all interest on the national debt and to retire bonds as they mature. Other spending would have to be cut, to be sure; but default will not, and cannot, happen.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The senators telegraph here what they are really afraid of: the House may pass legislation that extends the debt limit along with spending cuts\u2013cuts that will no doubt seem reasonable, not \u201cunreasonable\u201d or \u201cunbalanced,\u201d to voters. I believed that the Republicans wouldn\u2019t be able to get much in exchange for increasing the debt limit because the threat not to do so lacks credibility, but this letter suggests that the Democrats are more worried than I thought.<\/strong><\/p>\n

…What \u201clawful steps\u201d could Obama take \u201cwithout Congressional approval\u201d that would permit racking up more debt? Article I of the Constitution<\/a> gives Congress the exclusive \u201cPower\u2026To borrow Money on the credit of the United States<\/a>.\u201d Obama has no such authority. Are the senators urging Obama to violate the Constitution? Or perhaps to pursue the trillion-dollar platinum coin gambit? It is impossible to say.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sure. They want it for nothing, just like Obama wanted tax increases for nothing. The Dems say they are willing to negotiate, they just don\u2019t want the GOP to have any bargaining power.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But wait! Didn\u2019t Obama just get higher income and investment taxes on everyone earning over $250,000, precisely the higher taxes on the \u201crich\u201d he has always said he wanted? The Democrats\u2019 greed is never satisfied.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It would be a wonderful thing if the entire budget were on the table, but that isn\u2019t what the Democrats have in mind. Still, the Democrats\u2019 evident concern about the debt limit, manifested not just by this letter but by the trillion-dollar coin and other half-baked ideas that are being taken seriously by Democrats, suggests that more of the budget might be on the table than we once thought possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Does anyone remember what President Obama said about the national debt? RedState<\/a> reminds us:<\/p>\n

On July 3, 2008, Presidential candidate Obama said that adding $4 trillion in debt was \u201cirresponsible\u201d and \u201cunpatriotic<\/a>.\u201d Obama was referring to the $3.764 trillion that had been added to the national debt during the seven and one-half years Bush had been president. Obama of course got his facts wrong when he falsely claimed President Bush<\/a> increased the national debt by $4 trillion \u201cby his lonesome.\u201d When Speaker Pelosi took over Congress on January 3, 2007, the national debt was $8.7 trillion. So the Democrats must get some of the credit for one of the four trillion dollars candidate Obama tried to blame on Bush.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I guess debt is only good when the Democrats are in the White House.<\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The basis of the American republic is the U. S. Constitution. It serves as a guide to governing the nation.. We ask the President and Congress to swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution when they take office. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[97,3038,389,219,853,733,562,164,990,4771,285],"class_list":["post-17134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-chuck-schumer","tag-debt-ceiling","tag-democratic","tag-democrats","tag-harry-reid","tag-obama","tag-republican","tag-u-s-national-debt","tag-u-s-constitution","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17134"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17134\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17140,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17134\/revisions\/17140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}