Congressman: 'Constitutional Crisis' if GOP Caves on Debt Ceiling

by Matthew Boyle 15 Oct 2013, 5:25 AM PDT

GOP lawmaker says that if his party's leadership gives in to Obama, they will have forever altered the checks and balances of the U.S. federal government.

On the House floor on Monday, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) argued that President Barack Obama’s activities during the government shutdown over Obamacare are a sign to him that Obama would act nefariously to attack the full faith and credit of the United States of America by taking the country into a default in a debt ceiling crisis if the president does not get everything he wants in negotiations.

“Given the ruthless and vindictive way the shutdown has been handled, I now believe that this president would willfully act to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States unless the Congress acquiesces to all of his demands, at least as long as he sees political advantage in doing so,” McClintock said in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. “If the Republicans acquiesce, immediate crisis will quickly vanish, credit markets will calm and public life will return to other matters. But a fundamental element of our Constitution will have been destroyed. The power of the purse will have shifted from the representatives of the people to the executive. The executive bureaucracies will be freed to churn out ever more outlandish regulations with no effective congressional review or check through the purse. A perilous era will have begun in which the president sets spending levels and vetoes any bill falling short of his demands. Whenever a deadline approaches, one house can simply refuse to negotiate with the other until Congress is faced with the Hobson’s choice of a shutdown or a default. The nation’s spending will again dangerously accelerate. The deficit will rapidly widen. And the economic prosperity of the nation will continue to slowly bleed away.”

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Quote: conservgramma wrote in post #2

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While I'm thankful at least one congressman is finally waking up, the truth is, we've been in a Constitutional crisis ever since Obama assumed power.

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