re: #53 Obdicut

Why? Why isn’t it incurring the debt itself through legislation?

hmm, I suppose you have a point there.

I’d argue that leaves the common practice of congress authorizing a debt ceiling meaningless, and since (at least it seems to me that) that’s been generally accepted to be the correct way to deal with national debt since (again, AFAIK) the 14th came into power it would (especially in a common law system, then again, decidedly out of my comfort zone there) be established and agreed upon practice, which is not something you just throw out the window because there’s a technicality in the text.
(with my sincere apologies for this monster of a sentence)

however I see how it’s not so black and white as it first seemed to me.

I primarily saw an analogy to how we deal with phrases like these under Dutch law, where something like “authorized by law” means a black and white specification of that exception/other authorization, not some implication found in an otherwise not directly related piece of legislation.

I do realise that analogy holds little authority in US constitutional law, to say the least, so thanks for clarifying why it’s at least a grey area to me.

it’ll be interesting to see what happens if the white house has to play that card though understand (see the established practice argument) why pres. Obama would be reluctant to go that route as a constitutional scholar himself. oh well, it might just come to it; at least the fireworks will be interesting, worst come to.