The 14th Amendment Prohibits Questioning the Public Debt -- a Thought Crime

[elehhhhna]

The Founders are bascially saying "Don't even THINK about it". The were serious about this:


Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

[Ruby the Liberal]

1. Great. Lets lock up Braun.

http://broun.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=250246

Idiot wants to fire up the flux capacitor, unvote what congress already authorized and lower the debt ceiling.

[county worker]

2. Does the 14th amendment protect the Social Security Trust fund?

Can they not pay back what they took out to fight wars etc. Can they reduce payouts because they didn't pay back all they took?

[Igel]

3. Unknown.

I could argue either way.

[Igel]

4. It missed the founders by a couple of generations.

No, it's not a thought crime. It's an affirmation of responsibility and a clarification of what, exactly, the responsibility was.

There were 30+ states in the Union. 11 broke away cleanly; another 4 or 5 had dual governments, at least for a while. That mean 20+ states formed the Congress for the Union, sort of a rump Congress.

In the North you could have 14 states, a majority of the states in the rump Congress, pass bills. A lot of stuff passed by Congress was held not to apply to states not under Congress' control. Some of the "stuff" was debt, bonds and pensions and bounties. (The North has had a long and noble history of hiring mercenaries.)

When you put the Congress back together, you find that it's quite possible that the majority passing bills in the rump Congress didn't even constitute a quorum in the full, restored Congress. If not all acts of Congress passed down to the South during the Civil War, could the rump Congress bind the South as part of the full Congress? Could a minority, in 1866 terms, bind the states that were in the Union in 1860? If they were in rebellion, they never left the union; if they were in the union, they're being taxed to pay off obligations imposed on them when they had no representation.

If they were in the union and a chunk of Congress could act on behalf of all, and the Confederacy "congress" was reabsorbed into the Union, what about the South's debt? Was that binding on the North? How about the dissolution of slavery: At the time the slaves were freed they were property; ordering them freed would have constituted a kind of taking. The Federal government cannot just seize property without just compensation. If the Federal government was deemed to have confiscated and then freed the slaves, they'd owe former slave owners some compensation. That would be expensive, and repugnant since many in the North would have said that slaves were never justly propertyy.

The solution was this. The South's debt is voided. The North's debt is affirmed. In affirming it, the full Congress now ratified the issuance of that debt and made any discussion of the debt's validity moot. As for compensation for slaves, it was renounced and that renunciation was made equal to the takings clause.

It's a chunk of text passed for a specific reason, but whose language is ambiguous. Since it's there and ambiguous, it's eligible for free express repurposing.

On edit: At least I think I have this right. I'm in my early 50s, and it's been a long time since my 10th grade history class. (And, yes, we had a righteous history teacher: He knew his stuff cold, and while he didn't motivate a lot of kids, he put everything in context, with lots of detail, so that even if you just listened something was bound to soak in. Now, did it soak in accurately . . . ? Dunno.)