What exactly would happen if the 14th amendment were invoked?

[BarackTheVote]

I know Obama has been advised against this, and as a constitutional lawyer himself says he believes it's outside of his authority. But what if he did as a last resort if the House can't get itself together? I know the GOPers would immediately be calling for his impeachment, but so what? You're going to impeach the president for putting his own neck on the line to save the country you would have seen go down in flames? Good luck getting popular support for that. Besides, Gohmert recently said that if the President allowed the country to default, THAT would be an impeachable offence. So no matter what, they're gonna try to impeach him, and if it saves the American people some pain and suffering, why not get impeached for trying to literally save the country rather than getting blamed for letting the children drive the car off the cliff? I'm talking about optics, here.

But my biggest question is, doubtless, there will be some sort of lawsuit if Obama invokes the 14th. They'll argue that this oversteps his authority and that it's an unconstitutional order and that it can't be enacted, yada yada yada... would a suit keep the debt sealing from being raised? Would we default even if Obama evoked the 14th because a stay would be put on that order pending litigation? Or would the order stand until the Supreme Court had ruled one way or the other? Does evoking the 14th actually buy us anything or does it just cause an even more f*cked up situation?

Does anyone have any insight here?

[gopiscrap]

1. I was wondering that myself

[flamingdem]

2. The Republicans would begin Impeachment proceedings

for sure.

[VanillaRhapsody]

3. I was just about to say that...

this is what the whole point of this exercise is...because Obama wouldn't give them a reason to Impeach...they are manufacturing one!

[Cleita]

6. That's what I've been hearing over and over.

I wish he'd just dare them to do it and then get on with it.

[Rosco T.]

8. Which the Senate would laugh off.. however...

.. the comedy of them trying would be priceless, how long till one of them says "and he's a Muslim too! and he wasn't born here".

Let'em try.

[rgbecker]

4. I picture a citizen with a Treasury Bond not being able to cash it....

Bringing law suit in federal court charging Congress with "questioning" the "Public Debt" of the US. How quickly it works its way through the courts would be anybody's guess.

[Roselma]

5. This is the conundrum Obama finds himself in.

Anything he does is an impeachable offense. If he doesn't pay the bills - impeachment. If he claims 14th amendment powers to pay the bills - impeachment. If he claims emergency powers and orders the ceiling lifted - impeachment. This is the Republican's way of moving toward impeachment. Impeachment is a goal, not an afterthought, just as is the closing of the government and the movement of the country to default. These are the goals. One is met, one will be met on Thursday if the Republicans hold strong, and if Thursday comes true and Obama acts or not, he is subject to impeachment.

[steve2470]

7. from what I've read, the markets would not like the uncertainty around our debt

The Treasury would have to raise rates on the T-bills' and bonds' auctions. There would be litigation undoubtedly going all the way to the Supreme Court. Impeachment would be filed I'm confident.

The only good solution is a deal to reopen the govt. and lift the debt ceiling. However, if he invoked the 14th, I'd certainly back him up and understand.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

9. Article II, Section 3. Constitution.

He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States.

That would be in addition to invoking the Fourteenth Amendment.

If the House brought impeachment charges, the Senate would not convict. But everything is backwards with the Repukes. Faithfully executing the laws and invoking the Fourteenth Amendment is the right thing to do.

[BarackTheVote]

11. But you know that there's an aid out there right now

with papers to file for an injunction. Would the implementation of the president's emergency action be delayed while litigation is going forward, or would it stand?

[delrem]

10. Sanity. And sanity would be precedent setting in that clusterfuck.

[Savannahmann]

12. The country would go into a depression and the world would follow.

First let's be honest. The buyers of T Bills don't want to have to consult an army of constitutional lawyers who will write briefs about how the subsequent court cases will play out. They won't buy the T-Bills in that instance, and the only way to tempt them would be to set the interest rate will into junk bond territory. That is massively inflationary.

So we have to be honest and admit that people buying a million dollars worth of T-Bills are not going to buy them without a seriously inflated interest rate. So that means that interest around the nation would skyrocket. Soon home loans would be offered at roughly the same interest rates as Credit Cards, in other words double digits. It goes downhill from there. The economy slows down, and the victory we got, defending Obamacare, is meaningless when people are living in their cars.

This situation is now ripe for a RW loon to take control, see the election of 1980 for some proof of that. High interest rates, bad economic outlook, coupled with a desire for inspiration. Whamo we have a lunatic in the White House in a landslide election.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan#1980_presidential_campaign

The depression I talk about will be worldwide in a couple weeks, a month at the most. First people, and then national banks will be working to dump the T-Bills, and finding few if any buyers. Oh the Federal Reserve will buy some in an effort to prop up the dollar, but even they have limits of how much money they have.

Would you buy something if you knew that the value of it would be determined by a court case many years down the road? It might be worth what you paid for it, and it might be as worthless. Time and legal arguments will tell. Personally, I'd put the money under my mattress before I paid for the privilege to get the coin toss of about the same as I am now, or broke.

[Swede Atlanta]

13. This is how I think this would play out.....

and there is some precedent with Nixon's assertion of executive privilege during Watergate.

The President would only exercise this putative constitutional authority with the concurrence of the White House legal counsel and the AG. They would already have prepared constitutional and other legal defenses to the President's action.

This would not have been done in a silo. This would have been done in close consultation with Treasury so that if Obama "pulled the trigger", there would be agreement within the Administration on how Treasury should treat the President's action and how to proceed.

I suspect that the House, with the support of Republican Senators would immediately file suit in U.S. District Court for an injunction to stay the President's action pending further legal review. This would likely be fast tracked and failure at the District Court would be appealed for emergency consideration by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and a failure there would seek to bring the case before the Supreme Court.

At the same time I have no doubt the House would draft (or simply dust-off) Articles of Impeachment. This would be great theatrics for the Tailbaggers and no doubt Obama would be impeached. This would then move to the Senate for a trial where, just as with Clinton, the Senate would not convict.