President Obama has doubled the national debt and added an additional $4.2 trillion to debt through the Quantitative Easing program. Both of these actions are unprecedented. The issue that needs to be discussed is the extent to which Federal debt, at any level, is allowed by the Constitution.

As Scotus expands personal rights, rights not clearly delineated in the Constitution such as same-sex marriage, the rights of American citizens to exercise choice in other areas are being severely limited by Federal debt.

Debt limits choice since it constrains future spending by Congress on people programs. Since most of the U.S. budget is also committed to funding social programs such as social security and Medicare future expenditures on these, as well as other new programs such as clean energy, are being restricted by the debt and interest payments on the debt.

Just as household budgets are squeezed by increasing sales, gasoline, and property taxes, Federal debt limits choices. And this is the issue: if limiting future choices is a violation of the Constitution. This discussion seems to be very abstract but in reality debt is more concrete than the concept of a right and the boundaries of rights are always being used to justify Scotus rulings.

National debt is not debt in the common understanding of debt. A debt is created when one person borrows something, usually money, from another and agrees to pay it back in a certain period of time. It’s difficult to see how the Federal government is borrowing money since the money doesn’t exist today, it isn’t borrowed from anybody, and there is no time frame in paying it back. President Obama never stated when the QE money or trillions of national debt would be paid back. In reality it is only using the concept of debt to enable, without a vote of Congress, future appropriations. 

Where this becomes a constitutional issue is where it interferes with the programs future voters may wish to pass through their congressional representatives. Federal debt limits the rights of future voters. Two of the most fundamental concepts of the Constitution as expressed through the Declaration of Independence are equality and consent of the governed. If today’s president orders the Treasury Department. to create debt for the future he is not only taking Executive Action today, he is forcing the Executive Action to persist for many years. This violates the Constitution since it denies tomorrow’s voters the right to give their consent to how their taxes are spent. Their values and needs cannot be expressed through their congressional representatives.

The website usdebtclock.org ticks off the national debt every instant, as well as the debts created by states. It’s interesting to note that the debt tracked by usdebtclock.org is the debt the public have to pay, not the government employees. Public sector union debt, which is over $5 trillion today and rising by the second, is not separately listed. This is hidden from the public. The government only wants to remind voters of the debts the government is creating for them to pay and refuses to acknowledge the wealth transfer to government union employees in the future.

Curious voters may wonder how the government can seize their earnings without telling them the details. This is another gray area; the right government has to tax Americans to pay for their excessive public pensions. Or even to create separate pensions for government workers while forcing all Americans into social security. This is another manifestation of the violations of the Constitution created by government debt.

President Obama, through his executive actions on illegal immigration, literally created billions of dollars of debt for every current and future taxpayer without a single voter giving him permission.

All bills of appropriations originate in Congress, the Constitution says. So when President Obama issues executive orders he is violating the Constitution in two ways: one by spending without the consent of Congress, and secondly by creating future debt without the consent of the Congress or voters of the future.  

Federal debt is an affront to voters’ rights. It is a denial of the right to be represented, of the right to choose how one’s government spends one’s taxes. If a president can, through Executive Action, violate the 1996 Immigration Act and by so doing deny the voters the right, through their representatives, to appropriate money on legitimate programs, the government is no longer a government of the people. If all persons regardless of race or sex have the right to vote for the person who best represents their interests, they have the right to have their interests realized through the appropriation of their taxes. Right now they don’t.

This is the effect of liberalism: to violate the rights of voters, to force programs on the nation without the consent of the people, and to replace consent with the rule of an elite few, a liberal oligarchy. National debt, created by agencies of the Federal government, is a method by which liberals have seized control of the nation; have replaced constitutional government with an oligarchy. The strategy was to force policy through czars and bureaucrats, then pay for it through debt, by violating the appropriations process. Those who attempt to argue that both parties do this can only do so by ignoring the fact that the national budget had surpluses in three years under a Republican Congress.

It would be very interesting, and revealing, to see how Scotus would address a lawsuit, filed in a Federal district court, which claimed that a person’s constitutional right to congressional representation is being violated by Obama’s executive actions and Federal national debt. After all, if Scotus sees same-sex marriage as a right, and the right to have a cake baked for a gay wedding as a right, it would seem that the liberal justices would be very anxious to protect the rights of individual Americans to have a say in how their current and future taxes are spent by the Federal government.

Scotus must be presented with the issue of appropriation rights: whether voters have the right to determine how their tax money is spent by legitimate appropriations made through Congress, not through unconstitutional Executive Actions and QE debt creation. This would seem to be an easy decision for Scotus to make, since they have ruled to create a right to same-sex marriage even though marriage is not in the Constitution. But since bureaucratic policy mandates and debt are the most powerful and fundamental tools liberalism uses to seize control of government and override the consent of the people, it is doubtful liberal Scotus Justices will reassert the supremacy of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.  

If Scotus can force communities to spend money on liberal education programs it can force Congress to pass a balanced budget. It has forced Congress to pass numerous laws in the past. This is the only way to disarm liberalisms’ efforts to seize control of voters’ rights. Once the economy is growing at a healthy pace, households will have more choices in how to appropriate their own family incomes.