One TRILLION Dollars

So everyone's getting all riled up and ready to go for the next Fiscal Cliff (these things are starting to become like pay-per-view boxing... it's like Pacquiao and Marquez II but not at all entertaining.) This one should have a slightly different flavor... GOPers will argue that the tax stuff is done because they made a noble compromise and raised taxes on people earning more than $400K a year. Dems will say, no no no, we want more taxes on people making $200K a year.

GOPers will try to ignore them, fail and things will probably be just as tiresome as the last time but this time, they've got the debt ceiling as a cudgel to swing. Basically, they can refuse to raise the debt ceiling and all kinds of bad things (Default, economic collapse, etc) will happen.

There are a couple of things President Obama can do to get around this. One (the dodgier one) is to simply use the 14th Amendmant (how, I'm not sure exactly. The poor 14th Amendmant seems to get blamed for a lot of shit it probably doesn't deserve) to declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional and just raise it. (I'd like to try this with my credit card: 'Hey, Visa, I think your credit limit is arbitrary and stupid so I'm giving myself a limit of a MILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLION DOLLARS!' Anyone think that would work?)

Option number two is to mint a $1 trillion platinum coin, run it down to the Fed and be done with it.

Oh yes, people, that's a perfectly serious option and there's a law out there that given the Treasury the power to mint platinum coins in whatever denomination the Secretary chooses. It was supposed to be for Collector's Coins and the like but the law doesn't rule out makin' legal tender. (Can we invent numbers too with this? A 1 Zillon Dollar Coin perhaps?)

Listen, I find both of these solutions inelegant and unnecessary. There are small fry things you can do right now to cut spending that would be incredibly popular with everybody right now (cutting Congressional salaries and benefits for instance) and you could push painful deeper cuts to the long term where they belong and get a plan together to get a balanced budget.

We do want to do that, right? Balance the budget?