What&#39;s the constitutionality of the debt ceiling? Section IV of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution says the validity of the debt "shall not be questioned." Yet, Congress plays politics with the debt ceiling (as put in this Atlantic article, they "point a gun at the national credit rating and scream, 'One step and I'll shoot!'"), and default has been threatened over the course of these battles (thankfully, that's done for this administration, just before another threatened default). The financial market shows evidence that investors "view the credit of banks as superior to that of the U.S. government." What is the constitutionality of these limits and political games that do seem to cause people to question whether or not the debt will be paid? Wasn't the point of this amendment to prevent Congress from playing politics with the debt?
Congress is not questioning the validity of the debt. Congress occasionally refuses to authorize borrowing more. If the government cannot borrow more, it must run a balanced budget. The U.S. government's budget is currently so unbalanced that large spending cuts are required to balance the budget. In theory, Congress could raise taxes instead of implicitly preventing spending. However, when Congress refuses to authorize borrowing more, it rarely is in a mood to raise taxes by enough to immediately balance the budget.
No The first paragraph of Article 1 section 10 of the US constitution provides in relevant part: No State shall ... coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts ... Cites are created by and authorized by the states, and no city my do anything forbidden to a state. Creating &quot;SomeVilleCoins&quot; would violate the above provision, even if no one was required to accept it. Note that a business is not required to accept even US currency for purchases under current law, although it must accept it in payment of existing debts. Congress could mandate acceptance of cash for purchases, but has not done so.
Before getting into the technical answer to this question it is worth noting that when matters of a constitutional nature are involved then in practice it is not just a matter of a technical &quot;legal&quot; answer. Students and academics like to pose hypothetical questions such as &quot;What would happen if the Queen refused assent to a Bill?&quot; or &quot;If Parliament is supreme, could it abolish the courts?&quot; etc. The practical reality is that a liberal democracy, such as ours, ultimately relies on those in positions of power to respect the democratic conventions and preserve the constitution. When there is a legal angle to some constitutional issue the courts will play their part but, whatever legal analysis their judgments may contain, they will always have in mind the importance of maintaining our democratic system. It is also worth noting that where an Act contains an &quot;ouster&quot; clause (saying that a certificate of X shall not be questioned in any court of law) the courts always find a way to interpret that so that it does not apply in any case where the courts think they should adjudicate! Those preliminaries out of the way, I think the technical legal answer to your question is that first of all the Speaker decides and provides a certificate under s.2(2). You will see that s.2(1) deals with &quot;any other bill&quot; (your third bullet point) and s.2(2) requires a certificate from the Speaker that &quot;the provisions of this section have been duly complied with&quot; (i.e. that it is indeed in the &quot;any other bill&quot; category). Of course there is a further question of whether, if the Speaker gets it wrong, the courts could intervene and exactly how that might happen (the so-called &quot;John Bercow question&quot; of what if a Speaker goes rogue), but the initial technical answer to you question is &quot;the Speaker of the House of Commons&quot;.
No. Reason: Taxes are not a contract for specific services, so even if the government did nothing for you in return for your taxes, you do not have recourse to a rebate for "breech of contract." The only recourse is political. Theoretically if the government failed to provide a service that was required by law or Constitution, there could be legal action to force the government to do that action but you still don't get your tax money back. It might be an interesting act of civil disobedience, but no not legal. That is the answer. But to address some of the other premises of your question (Note: these are irrelevant because see above answer): The U.S. government runs at a deficit anyway, meaning the amount spent each year is more than the amount of revenue collected. For example, in May, 2018 the CBO estimated that for FY2018: BUDGET PROJECTIONS FOR FY 2018 (As of May 24, 2018 ) OUTLAYS $4.1 Trillion REVENUES $3.3 Trillion DEFICIT $793 Billion DEBT HELD BY THE PUBLIC (End of Fiscal Year) $15.7 Trillion So even if in the partial shutdown, gov saved 20%, every cent of your taxes would still go to the expenditures; the deficit would just be a little less. The U.S. government is saving quite a bit of money by not paying some subset of its employees, etc. .... believe that many of those employees will not receive back-pay. Probably not true. In the past modern shutdowns, employees received the back pay, whether they worked as emergency employees or were home. A bill as already been proposed in Congress to ensure that all will be paid when this ends. Some contractors might not get paid because they get paid by their employers, not directly by the gov. So in some cases no work, no pay. There are bills proposed to get them paid also. Note- I do not at all mean to downplay the effect on people's finances and morale. Missing a paycheck today even if the money will/might come eventually is a real hardship.
To pick up on your comment 'Does this mean if I wish to build a chair for personal use, then since trade of chairs exists between states, Congress has the authority to outlaw possession or manufacturing of chairs?': Yes. For example, the US Congress can legislate to prohibit a farmer from growing wheat for use on his own farm, on the basis that there is interstate trade in wheat and therefore the Commerce Clause permits Congress to regulate the growing of wheat: Wickard v Filburn (1942) 317 US 111. If you grow marijuana, or build a chair, or whatever, you conceivably affect the number of marijuanas, chairs, etc that are traded between states. Therefore you affect interstate commerce. Therefore the US Congress can regulate you. The fact that your marijuana or your chair or your what is trivial in the scheme of the national economy is irrelevant if the aggregation of all regulated marijuana, chairs or wheat is significant: 317 US 111, 127-128. If the law didn't prohibit possession of marijuana absolutely but instead prohibited, say, the carrying of marijuana in schools, then the US Congress might have trouble relying on the Commerce Clause: see United States v Lopez (1995) 514 US 549 and replace 'marijuana' with 'handguns' (OK the marijuana/handgun analogy is bad but hopefully this illustrates that there are at least some limits on Congress' power -- it's not just 'any physical object that relates whatsoever to interstate trade therefore unfettered federal legislative power').
An executive order is a way of memorializing in writing Presidential authority that is either expressly granted to the President by the constitution or statute, or is left to President by implication either from a lack of guidance or as a result of the structure of the constitution and historical precedent. Congress has wide discretion to legislate in a manner that limits the power to make executive orders and pass regulations, and can mandate that the administration issue regulations in a certain area or refrain from issuing regulations in a certain area where the Executive branch is denied discretion or denied the right to set overarching policies as opposed to deciding things on a case by case basis at a lower level in the bureaucracy. In principle, Congress could so micromanage the executive branch that it would be unconstitutional, but that is basically a hypothetical concept with no meaningfully well defined boundaries. The hard cases involve grants of regulatory authority subject to further approval by a subpart of Congress like a committee, as opposed to a full fledged act of law (something called a "legislative veto") which has dubious constitutional status despite being common. The main "meta-legislation" governing regulations in general in the federal government is the Administrative Procedures Act. Subject to the limitations imposed by Congress, a President can take any approach desired to making and changing regulations, but the APA does impose meaningful limits, in particular, on how and how fast, existing regulations can be changed, which may make it hard to eliminate two regulations for each new one that the administration wants to pass or is mandated by Congress to adopt to implement statutes it has passed. But, because a "regulation" is not a meaningfully defined unit, it is a pretty meaningless edict. You can satisfy it simply by cramming two sections of a bunch of regulations into one, essentially reformatting it for political cosmetics rather than making substantive changes, or by incorporating something else by reference. So, the 2 for 1 EO is basically an aspirational statement of policy and attitude more than it is a meaningful constraint. No one could sue the administration or invalidate a regulation it passed because it didn't comply with this EO.
If a farmer had recently built a barn (within the past year) that cost 45,000 dollars (paid for from a loan), on a piece of property that was originally 10,000 dollars(not paid for from a loan), but the market only values the property with the barn at 35,000 dollars, is the government only responsible for paying the market value if they decide to seize this land through eminent domain? Yes. The fact that you owe more on debt secured by condemned property than it is worth does not entitle you to more compensation, although the fact that the bank was recently willing to lend that much is strong evidence that its fair market value is more than the value of the loan, unless there was a corrupt or non-economic reason for it to make the loan. United States v. Commodities Trading Corp. is concerned with situations where property is difficult to value (e.g. thinly traded derivatives contracts), or where property is not of a kind that derives its value primarily from market transactions (e.g. family photographs or grave sites). But, real property with a purely economic function, like a barn used by a farmer for farming, does not fit in either of those categories. It is easily appraised. And, it is common for people to make improvements to real property that doesn't return $1 in fair market value for every $1 spend on it. But, eminent domain is not based upon book value. Now, it is important to note that the fair market value of the property that is taken itself is not the only thing that is valued in an eminent domain hearing. An eminent domain hearing also considers the impact that the property taken has on the property that is not taken. For example, suppose that while the going fair market value of a comparable barn on a comparable amount of real estate is $35,000, but it is the only barn at the farm which is useless without a replacement barn on the premises, and it costs $70,000 to build a replacement in the less than ideal conditions of the remaining land (for example, maybe the farmer has to build a bridge over a river to access the only other part of his land suitable for building a barn at a cost of $35,000 in addition to $35,000 to build the new barn itself). In that case, the eminent domain award would be more than $70,000, but probably less than $105,000 (most likely $80,000, with $10,000 being for the land and $70,000 for the replacement barn that needs to be built to preserve the value of the rest of the farm). Impact on the value of property not taken comes up a lot in eminent domain cases involving highway construction. The linked law firm's website illustrates many of the kinds of compensation for harm to the residual caused by a physical taking that are frequently awarded.
The only relevant case heard by SCOTUS is Nixon v. US, 506 U.S. 224, where a federal judge was tried and convicted for actual crimes, but would not resign his position so continued to draw his salary. The key legal question was whether the matter is "justiciable" (meaning, not a political matter but a legal matter). Nixon's argument was that Senate Rule XI violates the Impeachment Trial Clause, and the court held that the question (more specifically what it means to "try") is nonjusticiable. White &amp; Blackmun, and Souter, wrote concurring opinions (which might be called on in a subsequent impeachment case) that reminds the reader (and future court) what was not part of the holding of the court, and what might therefore allow future impeachment review. White writes The Court is of the view that the Constitution forbids us even to consider his contention. I find no such prohibition and would therefore reach the merits of the claim. I concur in the judgment because the Senate fulfilled its constitutional obligation to "try" petitioner. He observes that the Senate has very wide discretion in specifying impeachment trial procedures and because it is extremely unlikely that the Senate would abuse its discretion and insist on a procedure that could not be deemed a trial by reasonable judges. But, I would prefer not to announce an unreviewable discretion in the Senate to ignore completely the constitutional direction to "try" impeachment cases. When asked at oral argument whether that direction would be satisfied if, after a House vote to impeach, the Senate, without any procedure whatsoever, unanimously found the accused guilty of being "a bad guy," counsel for the United States answered that the Government's theory "leads me to answer that question yes." Tr. of Oral Arg. 51. Especially in light of this advice from the Solicitor General, I would not issue an invitation to the Senate to find an excuse, in the name of other pressing business, to be dismissive of its critical role in the impeachment process. Souter in his opinion states that One can, nevertheless, envision different and unusual circumstances that might justify a more searching review of impeachment proceedings. If the Senate were to act in a manner seriously threatening the integrity of its results, convicting, say, upon a coin toss, or upon a summary determination that an officer of the United States was simply" 'a bad guy,'", judicial interference might well be appropriate. In such circumstances, the Senate's action might be so far beyond the scope of its constitutional authority, and the consequent impact on the Republic so great, as to merit a judicial response despite the prudential concerns that would ordinarily counsel silence. In other words, review of an impeachment is largely but not entirely off the table, at least until SCOTUS declares that impeachments are completely unreviewable, no matter what, period (unlikely to ever happen).