Once again, Republicans are ruthlessly playing “chicken” with the nation’s financial security.
During the Presidency of Barack Obama, Republicans threatened to plunge the country into defaulting on its loans to force sharp budget cuts to non-military spending.
Seven years later, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) praised the Republicans’ massive contribution to the national debt under President Donald Trump.
On August 2, 2019, Trump signed into law a two-year budget deal that raised spending by $320 billion over existing spending caps set in a 2011 law—and boosted military and domestic spending.
The bill also lifted the debt ceiling, which is the legal limit on the amount of debt the federal government can have.
The bill threatened to push the budget deficit to more than $1 trillion in 2019 for only the second time since the Great Recession of 2007-2008 and add $1.7 trillion to the federal debt over a decade.
By January, 2021, the national debt had risen by almost $7.8 trillion during Trump’s time in office. It amounted to about $23,500 in new federal debt for every person in the country.
But now, with Democrat Joseph Biden as President, Republicans have become “fiscal conservatives.”
Joseph Biden
And they are prepared to plunge the United States into financial ruin unless Democrats once again meet their extortion demands.
The debt ceiling is the legal limit for how much debt the United States can take on as a country. Once that limit is hit, the U.S. Treasury can no longer issue bonds to raise funds to pay for everything that the government does.
In a January 13th letter, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned congressional leaders that the United States is expected to hit the debt limit by June 1—and urged them to raise the debt limit as soon as possible.
“Once the limit is reached, the Treasury will need to start taking certain extraordinary measures to prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations.”
Janet Yellen
Congress last raised the debt ceiling in December 2021 to more than $31.3 trillion. At the time, Democrats controlled both the House and Senate.
But the 2022 mid-term elections gave Republicans control of the House. And Republicans are threatening the nation with defaulting on its loans now that Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is its new Speaker.
New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks described these Republicans on the January 6, 2023 edition of The PBS Newshour: “These are nihilists. They came here, and they’re quite open about that, especially with their friends, and they say, we just want to burn the place down.
“And so they just want to be negative, be oppositional, and then go on TV and say everyone else has screwed up. And so this is a form of nihilism that is in the Republican Party.”
Congressional Republicans have:
- Rejected a new White House offer to essentially freeze domestic spending at FY2023 levels;
- Demanded work requirements for SNAP recipients that are more rigid than those they originally proposed;
- Demanded that new immigration provisions be added to the GOP’s recently passed border bill (which Republicans didn’t include in their own debt ceiling bill).
If default occurrs, the results will be disastrous. Payments for some or many federal expenditures could go unpaid for part or all of the impasse. Affected payments and programs would include:
- Interest on the national debt
- Social Security
- FBI
- Medicare
- Income tax refunds
- Veterans’ benefits
- Defense
- Food safety inspections
- Border security
- Air traffic control
- Medicaid
- The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Yet President Joe Biden can end that threat via the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
Passed by Congress in 1970, as Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1961-1968, its goal was to destroy the Mafia.
Originally, RICO was aimed at the Mafia and other organized crime syndicates. But in United States v. Turkette, 452 U.S. 576 (1981), the Supreme Court held that RICO applied as well to legitimate enterprises being operated in a criminal manner.
After Turkette, RICO could also be used against corporations, political protest groups, labor unions and loosely knit-groups of people.
United States Department of Justice
RICO opens with a series of definitions of “racketeering activity” which can be prosecuted by Justice Department attorneys. Among those crimes: Extortion.
Extortion is defined as “a criminal offense which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person(s), entity, or institution, through coercion.”
The RICO Act defines “a pattern of racketeering activity” as “at least two acts of racketeering activity, one of which occurred after the effective date of this chapter and the last of which occurred within ten years…after the commission of a prior act of racketeering activity.”
And if President Biden believes that RICO isn’t sufficient to deal with Republicans’ extortion attempts, he can rely on the USA Patriot Act of 2001, passed in the wake of 9/11. In Section 802, the Act defines domestic terrorism. Among the behavior that is defined as criminal:
“Activities that…appear to be intended…to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion [and]…occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.”
The remedies for punishing such criminal behavior are now legally in place. President Biden needs only to direct the Justice Department to apply them.
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COUNTDOWN TO DOOMSDAY: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on May 23, 2023 at 12:10 amPresident Joseph Biden acts as if he must accept Republican extortion demands or watch the country’s economy collapse.
But there are legal remedies for punishing such criminal behavior. Biden needs only to direct the Justice Department to apply them.
Merrick Garland
Criminally investigating and possibly indicting members of Congress would not violate the separation-of-powers principle. Congressmen have in the past been investigated, indicted and convicted for various criminal offenses.
Aside from their guilt for extortion, at least 147 Republican Congressional members tried to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 Presidential election to illegally retain Donald Trump in the White House. They can easily be indicted and prosecuted for electoral fraud.
Making the job easier for prosecutors: Former President Donald Trump, still de facto boss of the Republican party, has openly stated his desire to see default happen.
At his infamous May 10 town hall interview with CNN reporter Kaitlin Collins, Trump urged Republicans to default on the United States national debt if President Biden won’t agree to budget cuts.
Donald Trump
TRUMP: I say to the Republicans out there—Congressmen, Senators—if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default. And I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave because you don’t want to have that happen.
But it’s better than what we’re doing right now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors. You know the expression?
COLLINS: You once said that using the—that using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge just could not happen. You—you said that when you were in the Oval Office.
TRUMP: Sure, that’s when I was President.
COLLINS: So why is it different now that you’re out of office?
TRUMP: Because now I’m not President.
In short: If I’m not President, the country can be destroyed for all I care.
Yet for all of Trump’s professed concern about the national deficit, on August 2, 2019, he signed into law a two-year budget deal that raised spending by $320 billion over existing spending caps set in a 2011 law.
The bill also boosted military and domestic spending, and lifted the debt ceiling, which is the legal limit on the amount of debt the federal government can have.
The bill threatened to push the budget deficit to more than $1 trillion in 2019 for only the second time since the Great Recession of 2007-2008 and add $1.7 trillion to the federal debt over a decade.
Besides ordering the Justice Department to indict extortionist Republicans, Biden could stand up to them in another way: By urging his fellow Americans to rally to him in a moment of supreme national danger.
President John F. Kennedy did just that—successfully—during the most dangerous crisis of his administration.
Addressing the Nation on October 22, 1962, Kennedy shocked his fellow citizens by revealing that the Soviet Union had installed offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba.
John F. Kennedy
Kennedy outlined a series of steps he had taken to end the crisis—most notably, a blockade of Cuba. Then he sought to reassure and inspire his audience:
“The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.”
President Biden could send that same message to the extortionists of the Republican Party—but he has refused to do so.
Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the newly-installed Speaker of the House of Representatives, has told CNN that Republicans would demand spending cuts in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling. Those cuts would come at the expense of the poorest American citizens, as this has been the standard Republican practice.
Appearing on The PBS Newshour on January 17, Wendy Edelberg of the Hamilton Project, a liberal economic think tank, warned of potential disaster if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling:
“It’s playing a game with the U.S. economy and people’s lives that I think is irresponsible….I’m very confident that the White House and Democrats in Congress stand ready to negotiate on future tax and spending laws and changes to those laws.
“What I don’t understand is why those negotiations are linked to the debt ceiling. Maybe they’re both about borrowing, and so people have gotten confused. One is about backward-looking obligations based on previous laws, tax and spending laws that were enacted, and one is about future.”
There’s no mystery: By linking the debt ceiling to tax and spending negotiations, Republicans believe they can extort any concessions they want from President Biden.
But this doesn’t have to happen.
Biden can choose to invoke criminal law against criminal extortion. If he does so, he will save the Nation from financial extinction.
And he will send a message to future Right-wing extortionists: The lives and fortunes of American citizens may not be held hostage to gain leverage in a political settlement..
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