Now...it's all about the spending

[sirs]

Debating the debt ceiling is stupid and counterproductive, regardless of party.

Then why have it??  What was Reid ranting about if it isn't important?....just some gimmick?

Harry Reid in '06: Raising debt limit last thing we should do, will weaken country, hurt economy

[Plane]

When more gets spent than they have authorised , they can't even talk about it?

[Plane]

This coin idea is hilarious.

Treasury: We won’t mint a platinum coin to sidestep the debt ceiling
 

Posted by Ezra Klein on January 12, 2013 at 3:32 pm




The Treasury Department will not mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin to get around the debt ceiling. If they did, the Federal Reserve would not accept it.
 
That’s the bottom line of the statement that Anthony Coley, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, gave me today. “Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit,” he said.
 

An Australian $1 coin stands on a U.S. $1 note. (Tim Wimborne – Reuters)
 
The inclusion of the Federal Reserve is significant. For the platinum coin idea to work, the Federal Reserve would have to treat it as a legal way for the Treasury Department to create currency. If they don’t believe it’s legal and would not credit the Treasury Department’s deposit, the platinum coin would be worthless.
 
The idea of minting a platinum coin to invalidate the debt ceiling comes from a few key sentences tacked onto the 1997 Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act. “Notwithstanding any other provision of law,” it reads, “the Secretary of the Treasury may mint and issue platinum coins in such quantity and of such variety as the Secretary determines to be appropriate.”
 
The author of those sentences was Mike Castle, a Republican congressman from Delaware. The intent was to help coin collectors who wanted the Treasury Department to mint cheaper platinum coins. “People couldn’t afford the $600 investment, so they wanted the flexibility to put in smaller coinage so that people could collect them,” Castle told Wonkblog this month. But in giving the Treasury Department the flexibility to mint platinum coins of little value, Castle accidentally gave them the flexibility to mint platinum coins of unlimited value. “That was never the intent of anything that I drafted or that anyone who worked with me drafted,” Castle continued.




 
The idea of minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin was first floated in May 2010, in the comment section of “The Center of the Universe,” a blog devoted to Modern Monetary Theory. The author was a lawyer writing under the pseudonym Beowulf. “Curiously enough Congress has already delegated to [Treasury] all the seignorage power authority it needs to mint a $1 trillion coin (even numismatic coins are legal tender at their face value and must be accepted by the Federal Reserve) — the catch is, it’s gotta be made of platinum.”
 
The platinum coin idea gained some powerful adherents during the debt-ceiling crisis of 2011, but it really developed traction following the 2012 fiscal cliff deal, as politicians and economics writers realized that the country would, indeed, be facing another debt-ceiling crisis in a matter of months. A Twitter campaign by Joe Weisenthal, of Business Insider, and Josh Barro, of Bloomberg View, forced it into the conversation, and subsequent endorsements by Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and former U.S. Mint director Philip Diehl gave it further legitimacy.
 
But others, including myself, worried that the coin would be seen as an unprecedented power grab by the president, leading to a far more bitter standoff over the debt ceiling, a possible panic in the financial markets and a showdown in the courts. There was also the simple fact that it would, indeed, represent an admission that the government’s executive and legislative branches could no longer be trusted to come together and effectively manage the country’s finances.
 
Nevertheless, many top Democrats believed that the White House needed some kind of fallback option. Former president Bill Clinton said that if he were in office, he would invoke the 14th Amendment to call the debt ceiling unconstitutional “without hesitation, and force the courts to stop me.”
 
On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his leadership team sent President Obama a letter urging him to “to take any lawful steps to ensure that America does not break its promises and trigger a global crisis — without congressional approval, if necessary.”
 
In response, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell released a statement saying that to avoid the debt ceiling, “Democrats are looking at everything from the ridiculous (printing a trillion-dollar coin) to outright abdication of Congressional responsibility. But avoiding this problem will only make it worse.”
 
The White House seems to agree. This is, in fact, the second time that the Obama administration has ruled out a possible end run on the debt ceiling. In December, Press Secretary Jay Carney said, “This administration does not believe the 14th Amendment gives the president the power to ignore the debt ceiling — period.”
 
The administration’s position is that raising the debt limit is Congress’s responsibility until the day that Congress votes to make it the White House’s responsibility, which is a resolution the Obama administration would happily accept. Until then, White House officials say, they will not negotiate over the debt ceiling, and if congressional Republicans attempt to use it as leverage, then the consequences will be theirs to bear. As White HOuse Press Secretary Jay Carney put it, “there are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or they can fail to act and put the nation into default,.”

[Plane]

Hahahahahahaa!

The Congressman Who Jump Started 'Mint The Coin' Criticizes The White House For Ruling Out A Bargaining Chip

Brett LoGiurato|Jan. 12, 2013, 8:05 PM|735|11
http://www.businessinsider.com/jerry-nadler-trillion-dollar-coin-end-platinum-mint-obama-white-house-treasury-2013-1
Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, the Congressman who first promoted the idea of the Federal Reserve minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin to work around the debt ceiling, said Saturday night that its demise is a "shame." In response, Nadler said he would soon introduce legislation to permanently repeal the debt ceiling altogether.
 
In a statement provided to Business Insider, Nadler questioned why the Obama administration would rule out "one of the very few bargaining chips it has" on the debt ceiling if Congressional Republicans do not agree to raise it by sometime next month.
 
Earlier on Saturday, both the Treasury and White House officially ruled out the trillion-dollar coin option as a means of working around the debt ceiling. The White House has also repeatedly declined to consider another theoretical option — invoking the 14th Amendment.
 
Here's Nadler's full statement on the situation:
 
"It's really a shame that the administration is ruling out one of the very few bargaining chips it has with Republican extremists who are intent, once again, on using the debt ceiling as a means of political blackmail. That leaves us just two options of which I'm aware to gain leverage against GOP hostage takers: the 14th amendment and repealing the debt ceiling altogether through legislation I'll soon introduce. We must be prepared to use every weapon within our arsenal to prevent defaulting on our debts and sending our economy into a tailspin."
 
Nadler was the only member of Congress to explicitly promote the trillion-dollar coin option. The top four Senate Democrats wrote President Barack Obama a letter on Friday urging him to "take any lawful steps" to work around the debt ceiling, but they did not specifically endorse the coin as an option.
 
Nadler's statement is further evidence that Democrats are somewhat dumbfounded by the administration's decision to rule out the trillion-dollar coin option. Earlier, a Senate Democratic aide told Business Insider that "it's certainly a strange negotiating strategy to go out of your way to decrease your leverage by taking options off the table."

[sirs]

The idea behind the trillion dollar platinum coin was so outrageous, one wonders how it even had any legislative traction.  I mean, let's mint a whole bunch of them, deposit them in the treasury, and poof, debt has been retired....we're now running a surplus!!  Brilliant, right?       

[BT]

About that legislative authority to mint the coin:

The story starts in 1995, when Rep. Michael Castle, then the Republican at-large representative for Delaware, took over as head of the House Financial Services subcommittee on domestic and international monetary policy. Issues of coinage were part of that subcommittee’s jurisdiction, and so Castle — who tells me that he personally has never collected coins or previously hadn’t had much interest in coin issues — started working with coin collectors and others to draft legislation on the topic.

Castle’s biggest accomplishment in the role was the 50-state quarter program, which involved issuing 50 differently designed quarters in the order the states were admitted to the Union (it isn’t a coincidence that Castle’s home state of Delaware was the first admitted). But he also drafted a bill, the Commemorative Coin Authorization and Reform Act of 1995, that included this provision:



    The Secretary may mint and issue bullion and proof platinum coins in accordance with such specifications, designs, varieties, quantities, denominations, and inscriptions as the Secretary, in the Secretary’s discretion, may prescribe from time to time.

There’s a slight problem here. The law stated that the Secretary may issue “bullion and proof platinum coins,” but does not state explicitly that the bullion he issues must be platinum. This was later corrected by the United States Mint Numismatic Coin Clarification Act of 2000, written by Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who until this start of this Congress chaired the Financial Services committee. That act struck the word “bullion” and replaced it with “platinum bullion coins.”

When I told Castle — who, following a defeat by tea party activist Christine O’Donnell in the 2010 Republican Senate primary, became a partner in the lobbying division of DLA Piper — about the platinum coin solution for the debt ceiling, he was baffled. “That was never the intent of anything that I drafted or that anyone who worked with me drafted…It seems to me that whatever’s being proposed here is a stretch beyond anything we were trying to do,” he said, audibly astonished.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/04/michael-castle-unsuspecting-godfather-of-the-1-trillion-coin-solution/

[sirs]

Interesting

[Xavier_Onassis]

It could be a REALLY LARGE coin, like the natives used to make of stone on the Pacific Island of Truk (now called Chuuk).

It is not as stupid as allowing idiot Republicans to wreck the credit rating of the nation by shutting the government down.

I do not approve of using a refusal or threat of a refusal to raise the debt limit or to shut the government down by either party. Keep in mind, however, that the Genius Newtster actually was the one who shut down the government, and the fool still thinks it was a clever thing to do.
 

[sirs]

Then why have a debt ceiling??  What was Reid ranting about if it isn't important?....just some gimmick?

[Xavier_Onassis]

I am all for doing away with the debt ceiling. I really do not care what Reid thinks. He does not support my views, nor I his. I do not care what his motives are, or were.

[sirs]

But you didn't answer the question.......why is there one??  And why is DC making such a big deal about it, if we can simply "do away with it"?

[BT]

It is not as stupid as allowing idiot Republicans to wreck the credit rating of the nation by shutting the government down.

The GOP did not shut down the government. The rating was lowered because the Obama administration would not agree to the spending cuts necessary to maintain the highest rating. It was in all the papers, surprised you did not know that.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I answered all the questions that I needed an answer for.

Answer your own stupid questions.

You would not believe a word I said, anyway, there is no use bothering myself with your puerile queries.

[sirs]

But you didn't answer the question.......why is there one??  And why is DC making such a big deal about it, if we can simply "do away with it"?

I answered all the questions that I needed an answer for.

Answer your own stupid questions.

You would not believe a word I said, anyway, there is no use bothering myself with your puerile queries.

Perfect example of what I was just saying

[Xavier_Onassis]

Again, I am not responsible for Reid.

You want answers to your question, figure them out all by yourself.