How (and why) Biden should overcome the Supreme Court to end the debt showdown
by Cory Doctorow
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/26/mint-the-coin-etc-etc/#more-5395
So what should Biden do?\
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Call their bluff.\
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First, mint the coin. If the court strikes that down, issue coupon-free bonds. If the court strikes that down, declare debt ceilings to violate the 14th Amendment. If the court strikes that down, declare it to violate the Contracts Clause. Keep doing it. Throw in every solution including the kitchen sink – but never give into the GOP's demand for Biden to violate his promise to the American people and unilaterally tear up laws establishing programs that make our lives better.\
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This is what Lincoln did when the Supreme Court blocked his attempts to end slavery. It's what FDR did when they blocked the New Deal. The court doesn't have an army, it can't force its decisions on the American people. It doesn't have a bureaucratic workforce and it can't take over the administrative branch – hell, they don't even have the keys to the office buildings.\
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The Supreme Court's power comes from its legitimacy, not force of arms, and while they may not act like it, the Supremes know in their bones that without legitimacy, they are nothing:\
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https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/25/consequentialism/#dotards-in-robes\
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The justices in stolen seats have made it clear that they consider themselves to be "a de facto super-legislature that rules in favor of its own partisan policy objectives based on tendentious up-is-down reasoning or no reasoning at all." This is an illegitimate proposition.\
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The Supreme Court can't get any less legitimate. If Biden were to ignore the Supremes and make good law in the teeth of their pronouncements, it couldn't make the situation any worse than it is today. The Supremes have set themselves against labor law, against climate resiliency, against bodily autonomy, against political accountability, against the rule of law itself. We should not – we must not – cede the power to overrule democratically elected lawmakers and the will of the people.\
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As Cooper says, Biden should tell the Supremes to go pound sand and then "raise holy hell in speeches and the press to make clear the grotesque irresponsibility of what is happening":Here’s an institution trying to cause a completely pointless national default, destroying untold jobs, businesses, and the credit rating of the country, whose elite members are all unelected, where five members of the majority were appointed by a president who took office after losing the popular vote, and one of whom occupies a blatantly stolen seat. Here’s an institution that has struck down anti-corruption laws by the bushel and is openly rolling in oligarch graft like Scrooge McDuck, while declaring itself to be immune from oversight. All that would add to the political pressure on the justices. \
If Biden can't do well for the American people they they will not turn out in the massive majorities that Democrats need to get minimal majorities. If Biden can't do well for the American people, then Biden – who would lose an election to either Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump if it were called today – will turn America's predators loose on its people for at least four more years:\
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https://jacobin.com/2023/05/2024-presidential-election-2016-donald-trump-joe-biden/
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And let's face it, it'll be Trump. DeSantis is dead in the water. The GOP is the party of out-of-control, swivel-eyed loons who've been whipped into a terrorized frenzy by an evil, crapulent senescent Australian billionaire and his freak henchmen, like the taint-tanning frozen food failson. They aren't going to elect "smart Trump." They like "stupid Trump" (AKA "Trump") too much.
#debt-limit #default #national-debt #congress #debt-crisis #doctorow #cory-doctorow
