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Professor Robert Reich wrote an article that details how Biden should solve the debt ceiling issue. We will explore the Powell Memo, the document under which we live.
Robert Reich has the debt ceiling solution.
Reich on how to solve the debt ceiling fiasco.
Professor Reich has some suggestions for President Biden. He does not want the administration to be held hostage by the Republicans. He said the following in an op-ed.
If House Republicans refuse to raise the limit on the amount of money America may repay on what it owes — the deceptively named “debt limit” — they might force the United States to default, pushing interest rates into the stratosphere and shaking the world economy.
President Biden rightfully says that raising the so-called debt ceiling should not be negotiable. After all, Democrats joined Republicans during the Trump administration to raise it three times, even as Trump and the Republicans enacted a major tax cut for big corporations and the wealthy that caused the nation’s debt to soar.
Yet now, Kevin McCarthy and his band of Republican radicals are demanding that in return for their agreement to raise the debt ceiling, Biden and Democrats make drastic cuts in programs Americans rely on — in everything from from public safety to health care to education.
My advice to Joe Biden: Ignore McCarthy and the Republican radicals.
Mr. President, your oath to uphold the Constitution takes precedence. As the supreme law of the land, the Constitution has greater weight than the debt ceiling.
Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution states that “The validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.”
A debt ceiling that prevents the federal government from honoring its existing financial commitments violates the Constitution.
The question is whether Joe Biden has the political fortitude to take that advice.
The Powell Memo is now our guiding document.
I often speak about the Powell Memo and how this old document has fomented the polarization of our country for the benefit of a few. Today we will discuss it in some detail.
Powell Memo
This memorandum is submitted at your request as a basis for the discussion on August 24 with Mr. Booth (executive vice president) and others at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The purpose is to identify the problem, and suggest possible avenues of action for further consideration.
Dimensions of the Attack
No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under broad attack. This varies in scope, intensity, in the techniques employed, and in the level of visibility.
There always have been some who opposed the American system, and preferred socialism or some form of statism (communism or fascism). Also, there always have been critics of the system, whose criticism has been wholesome and constructive so long as the objective was to improve rather than to subvert or destroy.
But what now concerns us is quite new in the history of America. We are not dealing with sporadic or isolated attacks from a relatively few extremists or even from the minority socialist cadre. Rather, the assault on the enterprise system is broadly based and consistently pursued. It is gaining momentum and converts.
Sources of the Attack
The sources are varied and diffused. They include, not unexpectedly, the Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic. These extremists of the left are far more numerous, better financed, and increasingly are more welcomed and encouraged by other elements of society, than ever before in our history. But they remain a small minority, and are not yet the principal cause for concern.
The most disquieting voices joining the chorus of criticism come from perfectly respectable elements of society: from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians. In most of these groups the movement against the system is participated in only by minorities. Yet, these often are the most articulate, the most vocal, the most prolific in their writing and speaking.
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Very few realize that er are being manipulated like puppets as our business class is centralized on the tenets of the Powell Memo. They believe that the misinformation is just from those who know nothing. That is not the case. We have institutes created to maintain the supremacy of the current business culture designed to enrich a chosen few. Remember, we are not a meritocracy, and we never were.
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