re: #10 freetoken

I hope none of us expected post-election that the wingnuts would scale back on the over-the-top hyperbolic rhetoric about how President Obama wants to destroy the US:

Emperor Obama overreaches

Well, putting aside the talk of “emperor”, what Obama has suggested is a bad idea. It would make a nullity of the House of Representatives. That would be convenient for him, but the idea of a president who can spend whatever he likes, no matter what Congress thinks, is repellant. It’s unwise as well. It gives too much power, much too much, to the office of the presidency.

With no limit on the national debt, the president doesn’t need taxes. He can just go ahead and spend, and have the treasury issue whatever money or debt or whatever you call it is required to cover the spending.

Long term, this would create massive inflation, but presidents sometimes live in the near term and near term, what it creates is power to the president.

Parliament went from being a modest check on the Kings and Queens of England, to being the only meaningful branch of government, precisely because Parliament did not cede the power of the purse to the monarchy. Cede that power and watch this nation retrace that evolution. It could take centuries, but we’d get there.