{"id":934,"date":"2011-08-02T08:45:35","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T12:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=934"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:28:48","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:28:48","slug":"playing-poker-with-the-debt-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2011\/08\/02\/playing-poker-with-the-debt-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing Poker With The Debt Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/span>Jake Laperruque\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday morning, as I arrived to work at the Senate office where I\u2019ve been working this summer, I spotted a colleague sitting at a nearby desk.\u00a0 The entire summer he\u2019s sported a thick gray beard, but today his face was clean-shaven.\u00a0 When I asked him about the change he deadpanned, \u201cMy wife wanted me to shave so I . . . compromised.\u201d\u00a0 Generally, compromise means each side gives a little, each side gets a little.\u00a0 For a wife demanding a haircut \u2013 and apparently for Democrats dealing with the debt \u2013 compromise seems to mean doing exactly what your told.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Today President Obama will sign a debt ceiling agreement that gives Republicans the extensive spending cuts they sought, and the Democrats nothing in return.\u00a0 The reason for this one-sided deal is simple:\u00a0 Republicans were far better negotiators; more specifically, they were far better at bluffing.<\/p>\n

Democrats have argued throughout the debt ceiling debate that the GOP has been willing let the economy collapse to get what it wanted (severe spending cuts with no new revenues).\u00a0 It is this arrogant mentality \u2013 that we were the only ones smart enough to understand the ramifications of default, and the only ones patriotic enough to prevent it all costs \u2013 that ruined Democrats\u2019 chance of prevailing in these negotiations.<\/p>\n

I strongly disagree with Congressional Republicans on almost every policy, but I refuse to believe they don\u2019t care about the welfare of our nation.\u00a0 Speaker Boehner \u2013 a man who loves America so much he bawls at the mere mention of\u00a0soldiers<\/a>, or\u00a0children<\/a>, or\u00a0the American dream<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 knew the necessity of passing a deal, but he tried to convince us that Grover Norquist and Tea Party crazies prevented him from moving a single inch.\u00a0 He bluffed.\u00a0 It worked.<\/p>\n

Democrats, on the other hand, refused to bluff, even with the best chip in the game:\u00a0 a provision in the Fourteenth Amendment stating, \u201cThe validity of the public debt of the United States . . . . shall not be questioned.\u201d\u00a0 Some have argued that this provision authorized President Obama to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling.\u00a0 Does it?\u00a0 Constitutional scholars are split on the issue.\u00a0 But the political question doctrine would likely prevent a court from overruling his action.\u00a0 More importantly, a lack of standing would almost certainly prevent a suit from ever going to court in the first place.\u00a0 Republicans\u2019 only options would be to impeach President Obama, and it seems politically unwise to impeach a president for doing something a court won\u2019t say is illegal and that serves to save our economy from disaster.\u00a0 Even if they did, the Senate would never convict.\u00a0 President Obama could have unilaterally resolved the debt crisis with a simple Executive Order.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of potential legitimate reasons he opted not to do so.\u00a0 Perhaps he thought it would seem dictatorial and be politically damaging, or maybe he opposed the expansion of executive authority.\u00a0 In the end, it\u2019s irrelevant.\u00a0 The President didn\u2019t actually need to take unilateral executive action, he just needed to act as though the option was on the table. \u00a0He needed to bluff. \u00a0If he had, and Republicans felt that their options were small gains through a fair compromise or nothing at all, we would have reached a far more balanced agreement than the one that will be signed today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Jake Laperruque\u00a0 Yesterday morning, as I arrived to work at the Senate office where I\u2019ve been working this summer, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-f4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}