About the federal debt time bomb: Reframing the issue

The NYT published an opinion by well-known constitutional scholar, Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe. The opinion opines:

Why I Changed My Mind on the Debt Limit

Over the years, Congress has raised the debt ceiling scores of times, most recently two years ago, when it set the cap at $31.4 trillion. We hit that amount on Jan. 19 and are being told that the “extraordinary measures” Treasury has available to get around it are about to run out. When that happens, all hell will break loose.

The question isn’t whether the president can tear up the debt limit statute to ensure that the Treasury Department can continue paying bills submitted by veterans’ hospitals or military contractors or even pension funds that purchased government bonds.

The question isn’t whether the president can in effect become a one-person Supreme Court, striking down laws passed by Congress.

The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.

There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no.

And there is only one person with the power to give Congress that answer: the president of the United States. As a practical matter, what that means is this: Mr. Biden must tell Congress in no uncertain terms — and as soon as possible, before it’s too late to avert a financial crisis — that the United States will pay all its bills as they come due, even if the Treasury Department must borrow more than Congress has said it can. 

The president should remind Congress and the nation, “I’m bound by my oath to preserve and protect the Constitution to prevent the country from defaulting on its debts for the first time in our entire history.” Above all, the president should say with clarity, “My duty faithfully to execute the laws extends to all the spending laws Congress has enacted, laws that bind whoever sits in this office — laws that Congress enacted without worrying about the statute capping the amount we can borrow.”

That analysis feels right to me. Why? Because the 14th A., Sec. 4 reads in relevant part as follows: 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. Clearly, Congress does not have the power to force the US into default.

Unless the Republicans have subverted the Constitution, and maybe they have, the Constitution stands above the laws that Congress passes. In other words, Congress can pass laws that are unconstitutional and the Supreme Court is supposed to fix that. But here, Congress passed spending laws that are not being challenged as unconstitutional by Republicans. Instead the radical right authoritarians say they are willing to ignore spending laws and allow a default in clear violation of the 14th A., Sec. 4. 

Q: Does Tribe get the analysis right here, or is there some sneaky trick or flaw in the logic and/or language of the Constitution?  

Moral rot watch: Christian nationalist elites

A NYT opinion by David French opines: 

Tucker Carlson’s Dark and Malign 

Influence Over the Christian Right

On April 25, the far-right network Newsmax hosted a fascinating and revealing conversation about Tucker Carlson with Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, one of America’s leading Christian conservative advocacy organizations. Perkins scorned Fox News’s decision to fire Carlson, and — incredibly — also attacked Fox’s decision to fire Bill O’Reilly. These terminations (along with the departures of Glenn Beck and Megyn Kelly) were deemed evidence that Fox was turning its back on its conservative viewers, including its Christian conservative viewers.

What was missing from the conversation? Any mention of the profound moral failings that cost O’Reilly his job, including at least six settlements — five for sexual harassment and one for verbal abuse — totaling approximately $45 million. Or any mention of Carlson’s own serious problems, including his serial dishonesty, his vile racism and his gross personal insult directed against a senior Fox executive. It’s a curious position for a Christian to take.

Similarly curious is the belief of other Christians, such as the popular evangelical “prophet” Lance Wallnau, that Carlson was a “casualty of war” with the left, and that his firing was a serious setback for Christian Republicans. To Wallnau, an author and a self-described “futurist,” Carlson was a “secular prophet,” somebody “used by God, more powerful than a lot of preachers.”

Other prominent Christian members of the American right applauded Carlson’s “courage” or declared — after The Times reported that Carlson condemned a group of Trump supporters for not fighting like “white men” after “jumping” an Antifa member — that Carlson did “nothing wrong.” Rod Dreher, editor-at-large at The American Conservative, said, “I hope Tucker Carlson runs for president,” and a “Tucker-DeSantis ticket would be the Generation X Saves The World team.”

I’m going to pause now and confess that I was once naïve. I was especially naïve about human nature. As a much younger Christian, I’d read stories of unholy violence and hatred unleashed in Jesus’ name in religious conflicts of even the recent past and think, “Thank God that’s over.” I felt comfortable in my Christian conservatism. My conservatism reflected my best effort to discern the policies that would contribute to justice and human flourishing, while my Christianity hovered over everything, hopefully (though not always, I must confess) infusing my public engagement with humility and kindness.

After all, isn’t “love your enemies” a core Christian command? The fruit of the spirit (the markers of God’s presence in our lives) are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control,” not Republicanism, conservatism and capitalism.

But the temptations — including the will to power and the quest for vengeance — that plagued the Christians of the past still plague the Christians of today. These temptations can plague people of any faith.

Within conservative circles it has always been surprisingly difficult to tie a decline in Christian political virtue to the rise of Donald Trump. What seems obvious from a distance (wait a minute, didn’t Christians used to place a premium on the importance of character in politicians, especially during Bill Clinton’s scandals?) was less obvious up close. In countless personal conversations with Christians who are staunch Republicans, I heard some variation on the same plaintive question, “What do you want us to do? Hand an election to Hillary Clinton? Or to Joe Biden?”

This is just another garden variety warning by Germaine that something is seriously, gravely wrong with (i) American democracy and politics generally, and (ii) the American secular and Christian radical right. 

For Christians who ignore the undeniable moral rot of the leaders they support and want to follow, there is almost zero chance of them ever voting for any Democrat for president. That is how poisoned those minds are. For Christians with that mindset, it just does not matter who the Dems run for president. They will be hated, vilified, slandered and despised in self-righteous, God-sanctioned outrage.

What is Biden's new policy on asylum?

 Anticipating a potential surge of migrants at the southern border, the Biden administration on Feb. 21, 2023, announced a crackdown on those seeking asylum after unlawfully entering the U.S.

This week the policy is set to go into effect. The following article appeared both in The Conversation and Government Executive in late February and early March respectively. It was written by Karen Musalo an expert on refugee law at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, to explain what the new rule entails, what its impact will be and why it is so controversial. At the bottom of the page I have provided links to more supportive articles on the policy, both from the Council of Foreign Relations.

What is the new policy?

The Biden administration’s new rule – which is set to come into force on May 11 – will bar from asylum all non-Mexican migrants who arrive at the southern U.S. border without having first sought and been denied asylum in at least one of the countries they passed through on their journey.

The only migrants exempted from this rule are those who use a U.S. government app, CBP One, to make an appointment to apply for asylum at an official port of entry. All others will be subject to a presumption of ineligibility unless they can demonstrate “exceptionally compelling circumstances,” such as a medical emergency – which they will have to prove during a rapid screening process in a border holding cell.

The policy – which immigrant rights advocates, congressional leaders and faith groups are calling an “asylum ban” or “transit ban” – is almost identical to one implemented by the Trump administration in 2019. The Trump-era rule was later struck down by the courts as unlawful.

Why is the new rule being proposed now?

The Biden administration is concerned that the expiration of a pandemic-era rule will lead to greater numbers of immigrants at the southern border.

In March 2020, the Trump administration totally closed the border to asylum seekers in a policy referred to as Title 42. It justified the closure as necessary to protect public health during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, these health concerns were just a pretext; it has been well documented that high-level officials in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were opposed to the policy and acceded only under intense White House pressure.

Turning away all asylum seekers in this way was totally unprecedented, and inconsistent with U.S. domestic and international legal obligations.

Biden campaigned on promises to restore a humane asylum system. But on assuming the presidency he continued Title 42 and even expanded it to include individuals from additional countries.

Immigration rights advocates brought successful legal challenges to terminate the policy, while attorneys general of Republican-led states sued to keep it in place. Finally, in January 2023, the Biden administration announced that on May 11 it would end the coronavirus health emergency, which had provided the legal authority for the border closure.

This means Title 42 also comes to an end on May 11. Unwilling to restore access to asylum as had existed for 40 years before former President Donald Trump’s border closure, the Biden administration proposed the new rule.

Is the policy legal?

In 2019, the Trump administration proposed a rule very similar to that put forth by Biden, prohibiting asylum for migrants who did not first apply in countries of transit. The courts struck down the policy for violating the 1980 Refugee Act, which guarantees the right of all migrants who reach the United States to apply for asylum.

A bipartisan Congress passed the Refugee Act to bring the U.S. into compliance with its international obligations under the U.N.‘s 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, which prohibit returning refugees to any country where their lives or freedom would be threatened.

In striking down the Trump-era rule, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pointed out that the Refugee Act is very specific about the circumstances under which the government can deny asylum for failure to apply in a transit country. Under the act’s “safe third country” provision, that can happen only if the transit country is safe and has both a robust asylum system and a formal treaty with the United States agreeing to safe third-country status. The court found the Trump administration lacked all three conditions for imposing such a ban.

The Biden rule is somewhat different from Trump’s. It does not apply to individuals who schedule an asylum appointment at ports of entry through the CBP One app.

But this does not make the policy lawful. The Refugee Act expressly permits asylum seekers to access protection anywhere along the border – not just at ports of entry. And it does not require appointments to be made in advance.

In addition, CBP One has been plagued with significant technical problems, preventing many from even making appointments, and has raised serious equity and privacy concerns.

And more importantly, there is no getting around the fact that most countries of transit neither are safe for migrants nor have functioning asylum systems.

Asylum seekers arriving at the U.S. southern border pass through Mexico, which is notoriously dangerous for migrants, and countries such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which are similarly unsafe and do not have anything approaching functioning asylum systems.

Costa Rica, the one transit country in the region with an admirable human rights record and an established asylum system, is currently receiving 10 times the number of asylum seekers as the United States on a per capita basis, and its system is completely overwhelmed. To expect Costa Rica to do more, and take in the refugees the U.S. turns away, is not reasonable or fair.

What will be the policy’s impact?

This rule will deny thousands of migrants fleeing persecution their right to seek asylum at the United States’ southern border. They will be returned to Mexico, where human rights organizations have documented high levels of violence and exploitation of migrants, or deported to their home countries.

Beyond the individual human impact, the implementation of this rule will send the wrong signal to other countries that have – like the United States – ratified international refugee treaties and passed laws committing to protect those fleeing persecution.

The message is that flouting legal obligations is acceptable, as is the outsourcing of refugee protection to smaller countries with far less resources. The exodus of refugees from Ukraine and U.S. efforts to encourage European countries to accept those fleeing the conflict underscore the importance of encouraging nations to take in refugees. Leading by bad example will only undermine that principle.

Karen Musalo, Professor of International Law, University of California College of the Law, San Francisco

 [I am leaving 2 links to more supportive takes on this policy from the Council of Foreign Affairs: https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/can-bidens-new-asylum-policy-help-solve-migrant-crisis  and https://www.cfr.org/article/bidens-new-southern-border-plan-might-just-work ]

What are your thoughts?

I had a feeling this was coming............

The Washington Post-ABC News survey found the president’s approval rating fell 6 percentage points between February and May, with the share of those who say they approve of the way Biden’s handling his job dropping from 42 to 36 percent. Fifty-six percent of respondents in the new poll disapprove. 

In a hypothetical Trump-Biden rematch, 44 percent say they’d lean toward the former president while 38 percent say they’d lean toward Biden. 

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3992413-biden-approval-slips-to-new-low-in-wake-of-2024-campaign-launch-survey/

• 44% of U.S. adults polled said they'd definitely or probably vote for Trump vs. 38% for Biden. 12% were undecided.

• Biden's approval hit a new low — 36%, down from 42% in February.
• "Just 32% overall think Biden has the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president, down steeply from 51% when he was running for president three years ago," ABC's Gary Langer notes.
• 54% think Trump has the needed mental sharpness.
• https://www.axios.com/2023/05/07/biden-trump-age-election-poll
  

Another difference looks equally problematic for Biden should Trump emerge as the Republican nominee: Americans by 54-36% say Trump did a better job handling the economy when he was president than Biden has done in his term so far.

Trump is not Biden's only challenge: Given his weaknesses, both Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lead Biden in preference for the presidency in 2024.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/broad-doubts-bidens-age-acuity-spell-republican-opportunity/story?id=99109308

That said, substantial majorities of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say they would be satisfied with either Trump (75%) or DeSantis (64%) as their party's nominee. Fewer than a quarter would be dissatisfied with either; more are undecided about DeSantis. Satisfaction with Trump was far lower -- 51% -- as he fought for the nomination in March 2016.

Compare Trump's position to Biden's in his party: Just 36% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would like to see their party nominate Biden for president next year. Fifty-eight percent prefer someone other than Biden, unchanged from February.

Looking (far) ahead to November 2024, in a Biden-Trump matchup, 44% of Americans say they'd definitely or probably vote for Trump, 38% for Biden, with 12% undecided. When the undecideds are asked how they lean, it's 49-42%, Trump-Biden.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/broad-doubts-bidens-age-acuity-spell-republican-opportunity/story?id=99109308

When Biden announced he was running for re-election, I had a feeling this was coming......................... maybe not too late to send Biden the memo?