Indebted to 14

Rant time again!

Liberals are cheerleading the dementia patient in the Oval Office decision not to negotiate on the national debt. They are also, at the same time, decrying the fact that the federal government will soon run out of cash, which would trigger a default.

Their machinations would be laughable in normal times and be seen as nothing more than a negotiating tactic. But they seem willing to trigger that default because they refuse to acknowledge the underlying cause: federal spending that’s ballooned so fast it’s crashing the economy.

They try to misdirect the conversation with a couple of talking points that are patently false. Indeed, they are Orwellian in their absurdity. But because the public doesn’t have even rudimentary knowledge of finance and mass media (which is equally ignorant) refuses to check these claims, they are taken with more belief than the gospels.

The first is that the “Trump tax cuts” are what’s bankrupting the government. What they never mention is that ever since they were enacted, federal revenues have skyrocketed to record levels. That’s in both real dollars ($4.9 trillion last year) and as a share of GDP (23.6%). You can complain about the “rich not paying their fair share” (another bizarre liberal talking point), but a reality check shows that the half of the country that does pay taxes is paying more than ever. The problem isn’t one of not having enough revenue. The problem is that the government is spending our money faster than a drunken sailor on liberty in Thailand.

But what’s really piqued my ire is the latest talking point, which seems to have come out over the weekend. It’s that the President can ignore Congress and declare that the public debt can skyrocket without constraint. They use two claims to support this absurdity. The first is that since Congress passed the spending, to begin with, it implied that the debt incurred is already authorized. But realizing that anyone can say they’ll buy something, but not bother to pay for it (think about all those credit card defaults!), they’ve begun shifting to a new argument.

And this is the one that REALLY drives me nuts. Liberals are now of the opinion that the US Constitution gives the president this mythological power to bypass Congress. To buttress this claim, they point to the 14th Amendment. The argument is that the wording in clause 4 says, “The validity of the public debt of the United States… shall not be questioned.”

What a bunch of cow manure.

The ellipses are used to forget about the entire midsection of the first sentence, which actually reads, “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.” Further, it ignores the rest of the clause, which states, “But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”

Why does this specious argument drive me nuts? Because any high school student, never mind the learned members of the commentariat, can read that and understand what the meaning behind this clause is. After the Civil War, Congress was making it clear that the debts incurred by the Confederacy were null and void, and they would only pay the debts incurred by the Union. This was an important statement to make in what is a civil rights amendment. Many of the debts created by the South were not only related to arming and equipping an army but recapturing former slaves who were escaping bondage and fleeing to the North. Without it, former slave owners would have been able to sue the government for damages incurred by losing their former property. Without the fourth clause to the 14th Amendment, slavery would have effectively been recognized as a legal practice requiring remuneration for granting people their freedom.

It has nothing to do with what the media dubbed “the debt ceiling.” That is an entirely separate animal and the fact that supposed liberals are all for invoking the anti-slavery part of our Constitution to effectively enslave the entire country is not only offensive and disingenuous but speaks to their mindset. We are nothing but chattel to them; a means to enrich themselves on the backs of our enterprise.