so, the argument, then, is this idea that congress wants somehow treasury to prioritize which debt gets paid first and which ones get postponed and this or that, is it you re arguing it s in violation of the constitution? i think you can make a very strong argument that the entire debt limit statute, which is not in the constitution, it s just a statute, is unconstitutional if it requires the government to default on payments on the debt. congress can t pass a statute requiring the government to do something unconstitutional. defaulting on the debt is unconstitutional. therefore, the debt ceiling statute is unconstitutional. that sargument, and i think it s one getting serious attention. the reason this was included in the 14th amendment at the time is the government wanted to make sure that creditors knew they could loan the union the
a law professor at the university of baltimore, he joins me now. okay, let s first show people what we re talking about here. in the 14th amendment, and this is, of course, where the when we ended slavery, one of the amendments that had to do with that, but it included a clause about the debt, and it says this in the 14th amendment. the validity of the public debt of the united states authorized by law shall not be questioned. this alone basically makes the idea of a debt ceiling unconstitutional? that s the argument, right? yes, that s right, chuck. the idea is that that extraordinarily strict language, shall not be questioned, requires as the supreme court has said that congress cannot make any change in the payment or form of payment of the national debt. the national debt is not subject to the congressional whim. it must be paid on time.
see that anyone has standing to challenge a presidential decision to pay the debt in court. i think congress only remedy would be to bring articles of impeachment, and i think obama if he chose this route could say to them, that s right, i paid the debt, i was the grown-up in the room, impeach me. i honestly don t see how the supreme court could get involved otherwise. garrett epps, law professor from the university of baltimore. thank you for joining me this morning. thank you, i enjoyed it. it s our hump-day panel time, we ll get a preview of the president s news conference that happens in less than two hours. while she draws t s less th top crowds, polls show michele bachmann is growing in popularity. the white house soup of the day, roasted red pepper and tomato, because do you know
or not, the u.s. mission in libya carries on this morning, more than three months after nato s first strike. key senate panel is backing president obama despite fierce objections in congress that he s overstepped his authorities particularly on the war powers rescution. senator bob corker serves on the war powers committee, he voted against the authorization of military action. you heard a clip of his questioning from earlier yesterday, he joins me now, senator corker, thank you, sir. chuck, good to be with you. senator, let me start actually with the debt, what we saw in greece. we ve seen these pictures of chaos. europe wants certainty. the markets want certainty. when you see this debate about the debt limit and you now have speaker boehner saying, well, that august 2 end deadline is arbitrary, the treasury is setting that deadline. you re a former businessman, don t you want certainty on this? isn t it time to get it done and out of the way, this is not good for the economy?
,lh. it s wednesday, june 29th, 2011, i m chuck todd, all that ahead. fáplus, have you heard abou whole idea of financial armageddon? what would happen ifc the president simply ignored it? in fact, would it beé@ ko unconstitutional for anyone in the government to stop the government from incurring debt?r we ll get into that. anyway, let s get to the first read of the morning. president obama holds his first news conference since early april, really since march for a full-fledged one,;qw okñ11:30 i the morning in the east room, he ll talk about theçó deadlockn the growingxd debtñr and the c the president meets this afternoon on senate democratick leaders on the debt. why? they don t necessarily have the áár e. both parties are digging in with som$8ñe1entrenched positions an there s growingt( skepticism on capitol hill that the treasury department august 2nd debt