Senator Lee was, of course, once a clerk for Justice Alito, so he’s probably on firm ground here.   Lee points out two very important points – only Congress can authorize debt and and the 14th Amendment requires the Secretary of the Treasury to ensure that valid US debts are paid.  What this means is that Geithner can’t exceed the debt limit while he must pay the debts as they come due even if this means that other obligations of the United States are laid aside.  As Geithner  cannot lay aside Social Security and Medicare (they are entitlements with their own funding sources, the only thing he can do if he can’t borrow to pay old debts is to take money out of discretionary spending.  This means he’ll have to pull the money out of the Departments of Commerce, Labor, Defense, Education, Energy, etc, etc, etc.

And that, my friends, is the real reason Obama wants this increase in the debt ceiling – he is afraid to show the American people that we don’t need to go further in debt and doubly afraid to show that if massive cuts are made to federal spending no one will notice.  The whole thing about Big Government is the ability to convince people that utter disaster would result without it…that if we don’t keep the money rolling right on and up and up in Big Government, people will die; kids won’t get educated, granny will eat dog food…only Big Government can rescue us from this fate worse than death!   The truth of the matter, of course, is that at least half of government spending is completely wasted.  Money we don’t need to spend but which is spent to keep people on the gravy train.  That is what Geithner will have to cut if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.

I am a bit disappointed in my Congressional GOP that they do seem willing to increase the debt ceiling at some point.  I am happy that they seem to be holding very firm on no tax hikes and the need for significant cuts and spending reform…but the fact of the matter is that the debt ceiling does not need to be raised.  I believe we could educate the majority up to this if we really tried – and if we did it we’d be taking the last bit of leverage liberals have…fear that a failure to raise the debt ceiling would be catastrophic.  But, I guess we can only get so much at one time – in 2012 we’ll hopefully elect even more like Lee, and then we’ll be able to press things to an absolute conclusion.