US Government Debt Different - Finance Department - University of ...

60 The 2011 Debt Ceiling Impasse Revisitedbounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion,shall not be questioned.”Finding strong support for Executive Supremacy in this clause runsinto numerous interpretive challenges. First, it is not at all clearthat the temporary delay of debt service constitutes questioning ofthe public debt of the sort that the Public Debt Clause proscribes.More importantly, even if deferred debt service is proscribed, theExecutive could simply make those debt payments and forgo otherexpenditures. In August 2011, total debt service payments couldeasily have been accommodated within the government’s monthlyrevenues without resort to new borrowings. 5 Finally, more extremeinterpretations of the Public Debt Clause – claims that the provisioninvalidates congressional debt ceilings to the extent the ceilinginhibits the payment of a wide range of pension-like obligations andentitlements – run into what seem to me to be insuperable grammaticaland historical difficulties, given that the Clause’s referenceto pensions and bounties is quite clearly limited to commitmentsarising out of the Civil War.Somewhat more plausible arguments for Executive Supremacy proceedfrom the assumption that the Executive has some degree of inherentauthority to decide how to proceed in the face of mutuallyinconsistent statutory mandates. So, the argument runs, if Congressspecifies more spending than can be sustained by authorized taxesand borrowing, the Executive can choose how best to resolve theinequality, including the issuance of sufficient additional public debtto keep payments current. One could resist this assertion of inherentExecutive powers, as Professor McConnell does, with the argumentthat not all fiscal dictates of Congress are equal and that spendingprovisions should be understood as less binding on the Executivethan authorizations to tax or borrow. Or, as I outline below, onecould divine from the larger body of statutory structures built intofederal budgetary law crude congressional guidelines as to how theExecutive is supposed to proceed in Phase Two Debt Crises.5 Between August 2 and August 31, 2011, debt service payments totaled less than$40 billion whereas federal cash inflows were in excess of $186 billion.