The debt ceiling / federal shutdown / default threat dance is of course a recurrent, transiently annoying political brinksmanship shuffle. This time, however, the congressional GOP is overpopulated with nihilist firebrands who might just Go There. The upshot remains largely unknowable at this point—though it's unlikely to be good. From NPR’s Ron Elving:
How could this year's fight over the debt ceiling be different?
For now, the White House and the leaders of both parties in Congress continue to vow they will avoid default. But Republican leaders are saying they won't raise the limit until the White House and Democrats agree to negotiate deep cuts in the federal budget and substantial changes to the spending process. How deep? How substantial? Those would be among the questions to be answered.
But this is not a drill, and it is not just another repetition of a periodic exercise. For a variety of reasons, 2023 could be the year the dealmakers fail and we face the consequences long feared. There are pivotal figures within the Congress who seem to be working toward just this outcome as a policy goal…
Ugh.
Nascent "Crypto Ice Age" in the wake of FTX et al, my ASS! You just watch—these DigiFi hucksters will be exuberantly pitching scams aromatic of my foregoing deliberately absurd Photoshop spoof in no time.
Why the legal scholar Rohan Grey thinks the U.S. Mint can defuse the debt-ceiling standoffBy Annie Lowrey
Later this year, for no good reason at all, the United States might enter a chaotic period of financial default. Once again, the country has hit its statutory debt limit, because Congress continues to spend more than the government receives in tax revenue. The Treasury has no more legal authority to issue new debt and is currently using a series of “extraordinary measures” to keep the government’s bills paid. Those extraordinary measures will last for only six months or so. At that point, either Congress will raise the debt ceiling or the full faith and credit of the country will be at risk.
Rohan Grey is a law professor at Willamette University, in Oregon, and a leading promoter of an arcane idea that could save the country from all that drama: The Biden administration could exercise its unilateral legal authority over U.S. currency to mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin and use it to pay the government’s bills…
The power to create money in the Constitution is literally the power to coin money…
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