By Baxter
Under normal circumstances, we cats would be celebrating the fact that economically, the three most powerful people in the world today are women:
Christine Lagarde,
Angela Merkel and — subject to her confirmation as head of the Fed —
Janet Yellen.
Instead, we're fixated on an economic deadline that has us all quaking in our boots. And for good reason.
Despite
the illusions of the teabags in Congress, the world agrees that if the US defaults on its debt, economic chaos will ensue. If Congress fails to raise the debt limit, what will the President do?
We cats majored in political science, so balance-of-power fights between the branches of government generally amuse us. This one, though, doesn't. It's too scary.
Yesterday, President Obama — who in his past life
taught Constitutional law at the University of Chicago — said that he didn't think he had the power to raise the debt ceiling under the 14th Amendment. To do so, he said, would introduce too much uncertainty into the markets. How could people have confidence in the full faith and credit of the United States, he asked, if his decision to assert it resulted in a Supreme Court case? It would, he said, be like trying to buy a house but not being sure that your seller actually held title to the property.
We cats find that argument convincing. At the same time, though, powerful
voices are arguing that the President would have emergency powers to step in if Congress failed to raise the debt limit — because by failing to do so, Congress would be acting unconstitutionally.
This blows our furry little minds. On the one hand, we cats understand that if a President sees economic calamity — a form of warfare — being visited on the nation, would he not be constitutionally bound to prevent it? In short, would Congressional unwillingness to raise the debt ceiling rise to the level of unarmed rebellion and insurrection? This is the kind of question that no President has had to deal with since the Civil War.
And who would have thought that 150 years later, an African-American President would be grappling with something like this?
We just hope that, whatever his decision, President Obama listens to the spirit of Abraham Lincoln instead of the spirit of James Buchanan. Because the teabaggers — with their intransigence against the government, their hatred of a black commander-in-chief, and their flirtation with secession — remind us too much of the worst, not better, angels of our nature. We cats HISS.
