The White House appears to be on board with the platinum coin solution if Congress won’t raise the debt ceiling. Of course, they are being very coy about it.
Asked Wednesday whether anyone on the White House’s staff was examining the coin idea, [Press Secretary Jay] Carney said that he did not “know of” any effort, and referred additional questions to the Treasury Department.
“The president’s belief is Congress needs to do its job.”
After it was pointed out that he was leaving a narrow opening for the White House to adopt the proposal, Carney shrugged and laughed.“I think I answered it thoroughly. At length. With great detail,” Carney said.
They don’t want to give Congress the idea that they don’t have to raise the debt ceiling because the Treasury Secretary can forestall a disaster with the coin gambit. But they don’t want the markets to think there will be a disaster. But they do want the markets to put pressure on the Republicans. So, the result is that they won’t say one way or the other, which leaves it on the table but not in plain view.
I’d say that they are playing it about right. I still think people are crazy if they really think the trillion dollar coin is a reasonable interpretation of the law, but the House Republicans are even crazier. If they want to impeach the president, they can do it now. It’s an easy two-step process. First, refuse to raise the debt ceiling, forcing the president to mint the coin. Second, impeach him for being a dictator. All the right-wing organizations can ramp up the outrage factor, gun sales will soar again, money will fly to the right, FOX will get its ratings back. And then the Senate can blow them off and it will be 1999 all over again.
I can’t wait.
This is a similar move as Biden’s suggestion that there could be an executive order on gun control. Someone’s playing 11-dimensional chess again. Personally, I think our President has no intention of doing either by fiat. But by implying that these are on the table, he widens his options and forces some of his opponents into a scary freak-out.
Then, he gets the remaining repubs to come up with something he can agree with.
If, in three months, we have ANY gun control changes, (or an increase in the debt ceiling) he wins. Because six months ago, these weren’t possible at all.
The President now has some credibility on doing something by executive order. He did a limited equivalent of some Dream Act provisions by executive order.
I thought that keeping options open and using leverage to apply pressure was Negotiations 101. But if basic strategy passes for 11-dimensional chess these days, so be it.
Yglesias today put together several laws that seem to interact to require the President to mint the coin in order avoid default. Whether that would be a court’s decision about those laws is suspect.
I think that the coin is a wild card that the President did not expect to have in his hand. And now that he has it and the Republicans know he has it, it changes the game a bit.
Referring the issue to Treasury is a good gambit, signaling skepticism and wanting expert opinion. How the Republicans decide to play this now likely influences whether the public knows Treasury’s opinion and when. If the President really wants to go the shutdown route, an expert opinion that the law does not allow this gambit will be released fairly soon.
As for your two-step process, what if the President does not mint the coin even though it is (as Yglesias argues) the only legal way out of the crisis? Will the GOP impeach anyway if there is a shutdown or a default? I believe that they have the votes of themselves to impeach the President if they want to do it regardless of the context? You are saying they are sane enough to want some cover.
I don’t think they want to impeach him right now. Maybe a handful of them do, but certainly not most.
But, if he mints the coin, the call for impeachment will be deafening. I still don’t think they’d do it for the simple reason that they don’t control the Senate or have any chance of getting two-thirds there. At least with Lewinsky, you had indisputable crimes and a Senate majority.
Bring on impeachment. We all know they want to do it. Besides, if the Congress refuses to do their f’ing job, he’ll be forced to violate the law anyway:
A Question That Needs Answering: What Laws Should the President Break Regarding the Debt Limit?
The talk of impeachment will cause the global market to freak. Impeachment means no discussion of the debt, budget, or spending….who wants to buy US bonds when it is no longer back by the full faith and credit….
I don’t think we should be hoping for Congress to debase and discredit itself further.
First change the statute:
Add this:
Then make it out of plutonium. Doesn’t matter whose face is on it, what matters is the smile.
Just don’t stack too many.
Wow! The perfect anti-theft device.
If the President hands it over to Treasury and the Republicans are driving the world economy into the Marinaras Trench, all they would have to do is take a few days to decide what to do and the public outcry to do something would become deafening. It almost doesn’t matter what they actually do, so long as they declare the debt ceiling raised.
Much as I think platinum coinage is the way to go, I don’t see Obama going to platinum coinage until he has to. I don’t think he’ll use it when the money runs out. If things haven’t been resolved after a couple days or weeks, when the stock market is crashing and Obama is confronting the legal and political complexities of a partial shutdown, then I think he’ll start using platinum coins. I still don’t see him using the trillion dollar coin, because that would be a circus and Obama hates circuses. He’ll use a smaller denomination, and it will only be given to megabanks and US government agencies.
I suspect the Republicans will knuckle under to Wall Street pressure before it comes to that. Of course, you never know with those nuts.
But who could make change for such a coin?
good point; 2 half-trillion $ coins is probably more useful
I don’t understand why discussions of the debt ceiling talk about binary options: raising it or minting the coin. Isn’t it likely that Congress will simply demand entitlement cuts and maybe tax cuts and that Obama will in the end accept them in exchange for a higher limit? Whether minting the coin would be legal or not, I can’t see the Republicans considering it to be a factor that changes their usual game. I don’t see them as being capable of adapting that creatively.
Just to be a little mean, I hope the Trillion Dollar Coin has President Reagan on the Front and W.Bush on the back.
Right. The entire government wastes another year or two on insane bullshit instead of doing anything useful. That’s how people end up disgusted with “democracy” and longing for a dictator.
I know this is really about the death ceiling, but can I just say that the idea of a bunch of a bunch of white Republucans attempting to or actually voting to impeach the country’s first Black President over something that prob is within his powers to do so may just be the dumbest move the House GOP ever does. Man if they were trying to find a way to galvanize the voters that decided the election & who will be deciding elections to come, against them any farther then impeachment would def do so
BooMan suggested minting the coin would not be legal. Never mind that he’s not a lawyer, he insisted that it would never hold up.
Then multiple legal experts weighed in and stated that minting a trillion dollar coin is perfectly legal and the whole “legislative intent” criticism is not applicable here.
BooMan also suggested that the macroeconomic effects would be risky. Never mind that the idea was being floated by PhD economists.
Then multiple economic experts weighed in and stated that, with a few caveats (e.g. as long as we’re in a liquidity trap, and as long as the coin gets melted down after this is over) this won’t cause any inflation and would be a far better macroeconomic solution than debt default.
Now we’re getting closer to what BooMan really doesn’t like about the coin idea- in terms of political optics, it’s a loser.
I appreciate the fact that the bullshit is stopping (mostly- BooMan still insists that his legal interpretation is superior to other legal experts with far better standing, but whatever.) Still, I have to marvel at how stubborn people can be, especially when they’ve been proven wrong (e.g. legal objections, macroecon objections). Refusing to admit error and back down is a sign of weakness, not strength.