So as everyone originally expected after a May primary, Jane Harman’s successor in Congress will be Los Angeles city councilwoman Janice Hahn, who defeated wealthy Tea Partier Crag Huey by about a 55-45 margin in yesterday’s special runoff.
The suspense about this race came from Huey’s unexpected second-place finish in the primary, when he edged out Democratic Secretary of State Deborah Bowen for a runoff spot. The runoff campaign was expensive and abrasive, but was nonetheless expected to culminate in a very low turnout event–the kind where anything could happen. In the end, the Democratic nature of the district trumped Huey’s money, and the exceptionally nasty “independent” campaign against Hahn that featured perhaps the most revolting web ad of all time.
Nate Silver suggests the results, while somewhat reassuring to Democrats, ought to be sobering as well:

Ms. Hahn’s 9-percentage-point margin of victory, however, is underwhelming in a district where Democrats have an 18-point registration advantage. The race had received considerably less media attention than the special election in New York’s 26th Congressional District in May, a Republican-leaning district in which Democrats also won under considerably more difficult circumstances. But in some ways it cuts against the momentum that Democrats had seemed to garner from the New York race, and serves as a reminder that retaking the House of Representatives still qualifies as an ambitious if achievable goal.

Fundamentals and trends are always important, but in the end, you have to actually have elections, and the results do not always meet expectations.

Alan I. Abramowitz takes the punditry to task once again, for their refusal to acknowledge the truth about the category termed “independent voters.” From Abramowitz’s latest post at Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

There they go again. The presidential campaign season is barely under way but already pundits and pollsters are making misleading claims about independent voters and the role they play in presidential elections. Here are some of the things you’ve probably read or heard in recent weeks:
Independents make up the largest segment of the American electorate.
Independent voters are up for grabs in 2012.
Whichever party wins a majority of the independent vote will almost certainly win the presidency.
These beliefs about the crucial role of independent voters in presidential elections have become the conventional wisdom among the Washington commentariat, reinforced by groups like “No Labels” and “Third Way” that try to promote centrist solutions to the nation’s problems. Recently, the Pew Research Center provided additional support for this theory with a report claiming that independents constitute a rapidly growing and diverse group of voters who swing dramatically back and forth from election to election.

It’s mostly baloney, Abramowitz argues:

…The large majority of independents are independents in name only…the large majority of self-identified independents are “closet partisans” who think and vote much like other partisans. Independent Democrats and independent Republicans have little in common. Moreover, independents with no party preference have a lower rate of turnout than those who lean toward a party and typically make up less than 10% of the electorate.

As for the myth that Independents are the big, bad pivotal constituency of the American electorate, Abramowitz adds, that “…In all three closely contested presidential elections since 1972, the candidate backed by most independent voters lost.”:

In 1976, most independents voted for Gerald Ford but Jimmy Carter won the overall popular vote. In 2000, most independents voted for George W. Bush but Al Gore won the overall popular vote (despite losing the Electoral College). And in 2004 most independents voted for John Kerry but George W. Bush won the overall popular vote.

Abramowitz explains how the ‘Independents’ category is grossly inflated by the inclusion of ‘leaners’:

Let’s start with the claim that independents make up the largest segment of the American electorate. That’s true only if you lump all independents together including those who don’t vote and those who lean toward a party. In 2008, according to the American National Election Study, independents made up 40% of eligible voters but only 33% of those who actually voted. Moreover, of that 33%, only 7% were true independents with no party preference. The other 26% were leaners.
And what about those independent leaners? Fully 87% of them voted for the candidate of the party they leaned toward: 91% of independent Democrats voted for Barack Obama while 82% of independent Republicans voted for John McCain. That 87% rate of loyalty was identical to the 87% loyalty rate of weak party identifiers and exceeded only by the 96% loyalty rate of strong party identifiers.
It’s hardly surprising that the vast majority of independent leaners voted for their party’s presidential candidate in 2008. The evidence from the 2008 ANES…shows that independent Democrats and Republicans held very different views on major issues — views that were very similar to those of their fellow partisans. Independent Democrats were more liberal than weak Democrats and about as liberal as strong Democrats while independent Republicans were less conservative than strong Republicans but just as conservative as weak Republicans.
These results suggest that the high level of support given by independent leaners to their own party’s presidential candidate was not due simply to a short-term preference for that candidate over his opponent but instead reflected longer-term ideological and policy preferences. Based on this evidence, independent leaners are unlikely to be “up for grabs” in 2012. Regardless of who wins the Republican presidential nomination, we can expect the overwhelming majority of independent leaners, like the overwhelming majority of strong and weak identifiers, to remain loyal to their party because they strongly prefer their party’s policies to the opposing party’s policies.

Abramowitz concludes: “In a close election, a candidate with an energized and unified party base can sometimes overcome a deficit among independent voters. That doesn’t mean the candidates should ignore independents, but it does mean that unifying and energizing their own party’s base is just as important as appealing to the independents.”

It took me a few minutes to get my head around the recent report that 35 percent of adults, not just 35 percent of cell phone users, now own smartphones, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. More than a third of American adults, not just kids, are using cell phones to check emails, surf the net and noodle with apps.
The app world boasts a few stunning statistics of its own, including the sheer number of available apps — 425K for Iphones and over 200K for Androids, figures soon to be ancient history.
There are a number of apps that provide a broad range of useful political data, such as Walking Edge, a database for canvassers that pinpoints homes of undecided voters and supporters, custom-designed, unfortunately, for Republican-friendly campaigns. Hopefully, a Democratic version is on the way, if not already up and running.
Plenty of political consultants are offering to provide fund-raising apps for individual campaigns. From what I can gather, however, the quantity of useful partisan advocacy apps for Democratic activists could be more impressive. Much abbreviated political dialogue takes place though mobile Twitter and Facebook applications. But apparently, major app providers are struggling with questions of content and taste in deciding which ones to provide. There are a few good pro-Democratic apps, including:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has a mobile sign-up widget here.
‘The Democrats,’ the party’s official app, has some useful localized features, along with alerts, events, even some issue analysis
ActBlue Mobile makes cell bill add-on contributions to worthy Dems quick and simple
You can view screen samples for the “Obama 2012” app here.
Some others include ‘Democrat News,’ ‘Democrat Quotes,’ and ‘The Democrat News App‘

But, more are needed (readers please add good ones not noted above). Some possibilities include a series of daily apps, among them:

Message of the day – The DNC should craft a succinct message on a topic of current interest for rank and file Dems. It could be a rebuttal of the GOP message of the day, which has been part of their echo chamber for years
The Daily Stat – An interesting statistic for bolstering Democratic policy arguments
Political One-liner – sort of ‘snark du jour’ for the water cooler
Republican outrage of the day – A variation on Keith Olbermann’s ‘Worst Person of the Day.’ So much material here that it might be hard to pick just one.
‘The Read’ – Flagging a single must-read daily article or internet post for the time-challenged that explains a policy or issue of concern for Dems unusually well. App developer Handmark has a political digest called ‘Politicaster Left,’ (as well as Politicaster Right) but the offerings seem a little broad.
Candidate of the Day – Mini-bio of a featured Democratic candidate — local, state or federal — who needs some help in the form of contributions, similar to ActBlue, but spotlighting candidates of color and female candidates to improve Democratic candidate diversity. Press a button and your five measly dollars are automatically sent to them and added to your cell bill.

The apps world is expanding exponentially, and smart phone apps have huge potential for helping Dems, more than Republicans, to optimize small contributor fund-raising, educate voters, GOTV and lobby. A commitment to meet this challenge by the pro-Democratic technorati could be a game-changer.

Chris Bowers one of the most consistently insightful progressive electoral strategists. In a June 19th Kos post he put forward a provocative thesis – that progressives should concentrate their resources on elections where a win is clearly recognized as a victory for progressive ideas.
You should read the whole piece but here is the gist of his argument:

We have to start winning elections in ways so that the majority of political observers believe the defeated candidate lost because s/he opposed one or more progressive legislative priorities. Just defeating someone who opposes progressive legislation with someone who supports it is not enough. A wide array of pundits, candidates and political professionals must believe that opposition to progressive policies was the primary reason an elected official was removed from office. That is the only way we are going to start convincing people that opposing progressive legislation is truly bad idea for someone’s political career. As such, it’s also the only way we’re going to start getting progressive legislation passed on a regular basis.
If political observers think we won an election because our opponent had corruption issues, it won’t build progressive power. If political observers think we won because the other side had crazy candidates, it won’t change legislative outcomes. If people think we won because we were well-organized or because we used clever new tactics, then they will come to our seminars about how to run a campaign-but they will not pass our desired public policy into law. Hell, even if we win because the country is in the dumps and we get a wave election, that will give us a brief shot at power but nothing over the long-term (see 1977-1980, 1993-1994, and 2009-2010).
Right now, there are at least two fights that fit this mold:
• The first is the recall campaign in Wisconsin. The vast majority of political observers know and admit that this campaign is about Republicans stripping collective bargaining rights. As such, winning the recalls has real potential to strike a blow against the idea that pissing off the left has no electoral consequences. We can show that stripping collective bargaining rights can and will result in the people supporting it being removed from office. This will have a major impact on other states.
• The second campaign that currently fits this model is the battle over Medicare. This is because it isn’t really that hard to get candidates, pundits and political professionals to believe campaigns can be lost for favoring cuts to Medicare and/or Social Security. …the NY-26 special election, even though it featured a semi-major third party candidate, was an important step in cementing that belief. Imagine how deeply ingrained that belief will become if we retake in the House in 2012 while defeating Paul Ryan!
If tactics are how you fight a battle, but strategy is the rationale behind what battles you choose to fight, then the strategy to building lasting progressive power is to choose to fight battles like Lamont vs. Lieberman, the Wisconsin recall elections, and going explicitly after Republicans–or anyone–on Medicare and Social Security. We can’t just win elections, and we can’t just win elections with Better Democrats. We have to win elections in which people believe the outcome was determined by popular support for progressive policies, and a backlash against those who opposed them. That’s the only way politicians will believe they have to support progressive policies in order to stay in office, and thus the only way progressives are going to stop being thwarted and disappointed even when Democrats are the party in power

Republicans still want to slash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits to reduce the debt, but the latest public opinion data indicates they will be facing overwhelming public opposition in doing so. TDS Co-Editor Ruy Teixeira explains in this week’s ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’:

…A just-released Pew poll documents the extent of public opposition. The poll asked respondents what is more important, reducing the budget deficit or keeping Medicare and Social Security benefits as they are. By an overwhelming 60-32 margin the public prefers to keep Medicare and Social Security as they are.

The same opposition applies to GOP proposals to make people pay more for their Medicare benefits:

The public is also opposed to increasing the health care costs Medicare recipients are responsible for. By 61-31, the public believes people on Medicare are already paying enough of their health care costs.

Nor is there much public support for reducing medical benefits for low-income Americans:

…By 58-37, they say that low-income people should not have their benefits taken away, rather than agreeing that states should be able to cut back on Medicaid eligibility to deal with budget problems.

All of the media hype about debt reduction notwithstanding, the public remains unconvinced that “slashing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security has to be part of any such deal,” says Teixeira. “Conservatives, if they have any sense, will back off on this one.”

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
According to received wisdom, the Christian Right is engaged in a tactical alliance with more secular-minded conservatives in the Republican Party. The pairing was established as far back as 1980, when Ronald Reagan made unambiguous support for social-conservative priorities (especially the abolition of abortion rights) GOP orthodoxy and earned the support of conservative evangelicals who had been politically mobilized and then bitterly disappointed by Jimmy Carter. The relationship has sometimes been compared to a “marriage of convenience,” and indeed, Christian Right leaders have never been reluctant to complain that they are being taken for granted and underserved by their political partners.
Given this background, one might assume that Christian Right leaders would be exceptionally nervous about the ascendancy of the Tea Party Movement, with its libertarian streak and its fixation on fiscal issues. But as it turns out, Christian Right elites, for their own peculiar reasons, have become enthusiastic participants in the drive to combat Big Government and its enablers in both parties. It’s no accident that one red-hot candidate for president, Michele Bachmann, and a much-discussed likely candidate, Rick Perry, each have one foot planted in the Christian Right and another in the Tea Party Movement. To a remarkable extent, today’s theocrats have stopped thinking of “social issues” like abortion or gay marriage as isolated from or in competition with fiscal or economic issues, and started thinking of them as part and parcel of a broader challenge that requires the radical transformation of government itself.
On an institutional level, the merger of Christian Right and Tea Party interests is remarkably advanced. The alliance has served as the very foundation stone of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, the latest venture of that intrepid politico-religious entrepreneur, Ralph Reed, which has sprouted chapters in many states, most prominently Iowa, where it sponsored the first candidate forum of the 2012 cycle. There is even a term to describe this new strain of conservatism: the “Teavangelicals,” a subject of a recent broadcast by Christian Right journalist David Brody, which, among other things, examined the conservative evangelical roots of major Tea Party leaders. Most recently, a host of organizations closely connected with the Christian Right and “social issues” causes have signed onto the “Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge,” the Tea Party-inspired oath that demands a position on the debt limit vote that is incompatible with any bipartisan negotiations.
But this convergence between the two groups goes well beyond coalition politics and reflects a radicalization of conservative evangelical elites that is just as striking as the rise of the Tea Party itself. Indeed, the worldview of many Christian Right leaders has evolved into an understanding of government (at least under secularist management) as a satanic presence that seeks to displace God and the churches through social programs, to practice infanticide and euthanasia, to destroy parental control of children, to reward vice and punish virtue, and to thwart America’s divinely appointed destiny as a redeemer nation fighting for Christ against the world’s many infidels.
As an illustration of this phenomenon, it’s worth unpacking a few lines from a recent missive by televangelist James Robison, the convener of two recent meetings of Christian Right leaders in Texas to ponder their role in 2012, and also of a similar session back in 1979 that helped pave the way for Reagan’s conquest of conservative evangelicals. Says Robison:

There are moral absolutes. No person’s failure reduces or redefines the standards carved in stone by the finger of God and revealed in His Word. We must find a way to stop judges and courts from misinterpreting the Constitution and writing their own laws.

“Activist judges” who have developed and applied protections for abortion rights, non-discrimination, and church-state separation have long been a bugaboo for the Christian Right. But Robison appears to be extending this traditional list of evangelical grievances, adding his blessing to the Tea Party’s objection to the string of Supreme Court decisions that enabled the federal government to enact New Deal programs like Social Security that protect people afflicted by personal “failure” from the consequences of their actions. He continues:

Success and prosperity may be mishandled by some, but the potential for success that produces opportunity for all and prosperity at different levels is not the problem. Those we elect must keep the free market free, healthy and under the influence of people who understand the importance of personal responsibility.

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MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews wondered aloud on Sunday if perhaps President Obama was starting to look like “the adult in the room” with respect to the struggle over raising the debt ceiling.
It’s a damn good question. The Republicans have been so rigidly infantile in their cut taxes and spending monomania that it seems likely an increasing proportion of swing voters have to be thinking “I don’t like all this talk about default and screwing up the world economy even more to make a point. Boehner, Bachmann and the Republicans seem more like angry children than grown-ups who are serious about compromise and governing sensibly.”
Speaker Boehner is still insisting on a $2.4 trillion deal, linked to a “dollar-to-dollar” ratio of spending cuts to debt ceiling increase. But President Obama wants a bigger, more flexible deal, and is holding out for $4 trillion package with a debt ceiling extension until at least Jan. 1, 2013. Negotiations resume today, with an 11:00 am press conference featuring the President’s update.
Ideologues, left and right want what they want. Middle of the road voters want to see policy compromises that guard against extremes and move the economy forward in a way that doesn’t penalize everyone but the rich. A common sense compromise might include a $3 trillion package with very modest, way-down-the-road entitlement cuts allowing the Republicans to save a little face, but significant tax hikes on the rich to give Dems some buy-in.
Progressive Dems fault President Obama for giving too much away up front. The frequently-heard meme is that he usually starts negotiating with the compromise position. There is merit in this critique. But the upside is that he is being seen as the only one who is willing to compromise with respect to just about all the debates over economic policy. This may help him get re-elected, argue progressives, but at what price?
Opinion data indicates that Dems may have an edge with voters in the debt ceiling debate. Asked in a Pew Research Center poll 6/16-19, “As you may know, unless Congress and the president can agree to raise the federal debt limit soon, the government will not be able to borrow more money to fund its operations and pay its debts. If the limit is not raised, who do you think would mainly be responsible for this: the Obama Administration or the Republicans in Congress?,” 33 percent said the Obama Administration would be responsible, compared with 42 percent who put it on “Republicans in congress.” (12 percent said both).
It’s hard to imagine how Republicans could have gained any advantage in the 3+ weeks since that poll. My guess is that the GOP’s zero-taxes-on-the-rich position has not served them well in recent weeks, and the Dem’s “shared sacrifice” sound-bite is beginning to resonate with crisis-weary voters as a sound principle of any reasonable compromise. A little amplification of it from the MSM, as well as Dems, could help — perhaps a lot.

Princeton historian Julian E. Zelizer has an insightful post up at CNN Opinion, “President’s Bully Pulpit Is Not What It Used to Be,” which should be of interest to political junkies across the left-right spectrum. As President Obama takes to the bully pulpit today to win public support for his debt ceiling and budget plans, Zelizer provides an excellent mini-history of the use of the bully pulpit and then explains its limitations in 2011:

…The current structure of the media has emasculated the bully pulpit. Regardless of how good a president is on the stump, it is almost impossible for him to command public attention, because there is no singular “media” to speak of. Instead, Americans receive their media through countless television stations and websites.
During the 1960s, when Presidents Kennedy, Johnson or Nixon spoke, the choice was to hear them or turn off the television and radio. Today, if President Obama wanted to conduct a fireside chat, it is doubtful that many people would be listening.
With the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, the media were also able to shed the appearance of neutrality and objectivity. Every perspective did not have to receive equal time. On many television and radio stations, objective reporters have been replaced with openly partisan commentators. Any presidential message is quickly surrounded by polemical instant commentary that diminishes the power of what he says.
Making matters worse, on the Internet, presidents can’t even fully control the time they have as they must compete with live blogs and video commentary as they try to share their message. Even within most households, the era of the single family television is gone. Now in many middle-class families everyone has their own media and is watching their own thing.

Zelizer may be overstating his case a bit — free live television time is nothing to be sniffed at, since most people still get their political information from TV. But there is no question that Zelizer is right about the multiplicity of options diluting the bully pulpit in recent decades. Nonetheless, a president who learns how to leverage multimedia tools to project a single message will gain an edge unavailable to his predecessors.

So in the wake of the “Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge” signed by seven Republican presidential candidates, and the “Pro-Life Presidential Pledge” signed by five, along comes Iowa social conservative kingpin Bob Vander Plaats of the Family Leader organization with a new pledge–actually an oath–it calls “The Marriage Vow.”
You have to read this document to believe it. Styled as a “pro-family” platform, the pledge goes far beyond the usual condemnations of same-sex marriage and abortion and requires support for restrictions on divorce (hardly a federal matter), the firing of military officers who place women in forward combat roles, and “recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, [and] greater financial stability.” If that’s not enough, it also enjoins “recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.” This, in case you are wondering, is a nod to the “Full Quiver (or Quiverfull) Movement” that encourages large families in a patriarchal structure as a religious obligation, not to mention to those anti-choicers who want to ban some of the most popular forms of contraception.
The preamble to the “Marriage Vow” is even weirder, asserting among other things that “faithful monogomy” was a central preoccupation of the Founding Fathers; that slaves benefitted from stronger families than African-Americans have today; and that any claims there is a genetic basis for homosexuality are “anti-scientific.”
The “Marriage Vow” seems tailor-made to feed the backlash against ever-proliferating “pledges” imposed on Republican presidential candidates by the Right. But Vander Plaats and his group cannot be dissed without risk by anyone wanting to win the Iowa Caucuses. A perennial statewide candidate (his 2010 primary challenge to now-Gov. Terry Branstad won a surprising 41% of the vote), Vander Plaats was co-chair of Mike Huckabee’s victorious 2008 Iowa Caucus campaign, and also spearheaded the successful 2010 effort to recall state Supreme Court judges who supported the 2009 decision legalizing same-sex marriage.
Kevin Hall of The Iowa Republican suggests that the “Vow” is a power-play by VanderPlaats to influence the outcome of the August 13 Iowa State GOP straw poll, in which The Family Leader has pledged neutrality, by separating candidates deemed acceptable from those who won’t sign the oath. And indeed, Michele Bachmann, rumored to be Vander Plaats’ current favorite, signed it virtually before the ink dried. What will really be interesting is whether Tim Pawlenty, who has been eagerly accepting every ideological demand made of him by the Right, signs this document. It is certainly designed to freak out the more secular-minded Establishment Republicans he will eventually need if he is to put together a winning coalition of everyone in the party who doesn’t like Mitt Romney. But he has to do well in Iowa for that to matter, so my guess is that he will follow Bachmann in kissing Vander Plaats’ ring and associating himself with a fresh batch of extremism.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
With Obama set to meet with congressional leaders from both parties on Thursday in the hopes of working out a deal to raise the debt ceiling, it’s a good time to step back from the details of the controversy and assess the bigger picture. My conclusion: We can’t get through the presidential election without addressing the fundamental issues facing the country and dividing the parties–the size of government, the level of taxation, and the future of Medicare and Medicaid. But with Republicans committed to their anti-tax orthodoxy and Democrats unwilling to surrender to it, the possibility of a compromise in the next 27 days seems as remote as the consequences of a failure to raise the ceiling seem dire. In place of both these options there’s a third possibility–an interim agreement, which has many longer-term downsides but may be the best we can do right now. Here’s the analysis that leads to me this conclusion.
The current negotiations can yield three possible outcomes. First, the parties might defy the odds and reach a grand bargain that includes revenues, Medicare, and Medicaid, as well as domestic and defense discretionary spending. According to some reports, before the Biden talks broke down, negotiators had identified possible spending cuts totaling at least $1.9 trillion (excluding interest savings). But as long as Republicans refuse to consider any revenue increases, the grand bargain won’t happen.
Nor should it. Yes, we’re spending too much. But we’re also taxing too little–or, if you prefer, spending too much through the tax code. Writing in the most recent issue of the conservative-leaning journal National Affairs, Donald Marron (a former CEA member and CBO director under George W. Bush) says that “America needs to fix its broken tax system and find additional revenue to help reduce our persistent budget deficits. The best way to achieve both aims is to take a hatchet to the thicket of spending-like tax preference.” He’s absolutely right. Obama and the congressional Democrats should not accept any deal lending credibility to the view that we can stabilize our long-term finances without additional revenues.
A second possible outcome is that the contending parties can’t converge on an interim solution and that we reach August 2nd without an agreement. What then? One possibility might be called “son of TARP”: the markets crash, panic spreads, and those who previously doubted the significance of a default see the error of their ways. Some economists believe that even a very short default would have long-lasting consequences for the perceived credit-worthiness of the United States, and therefore for interest rates. Putting their projection to the test of events strikes me as a reckless risk that no one should choose to run.
Each party has now advanced its favored scenario for avoiding default in the absence of an agreement. Led by Senator Pat Toomey, some Republicans believe that the Secretary of the Treasury could avert default by moving U.S. debt to the head of the line as the first claimant on government revenues. Secretary Geithner denies that he has such authority and insists that the failure to meet our full range of obligations would be perceived as, and have the same effect as, a default on our debt.
An analysis released yesterday by the Bipartisan Policy Center dramatizes this point. The day after the August 2 deadline, the government will have about $12 billion in receipts versus $32 billion in commitments, including a $23 billion Social Security payment. Even if the government reneged on all obligations other than Social Security, it couldn’t send out the checks in full and on time. And that’s just Day 1. By the end of the month, the government would have failed to meet $134 billion in legal obligations.
For their part, some Democrats have urged President Obama to invoke Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which states that “the validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.” Doing so would plunge the government into uncharted constitutional waters and all-out partisan warfare. On the one hand, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution clearly vests the power to “borrow Money on the credit of the United States” in the legislative branch, casting doubt on the president’s ability to issue debt in the absence of congressional authorization. On the other hand, the power to borrow money entails the obligation to repay it, and it is up to Congress to meet that obligation–a legal obligation reinforced by the 14th Amendment. While the amendment’s language is rooted in the specific circumstances of the Civil War, the Supreme Court has been inclined to read it more broadly. In Perry v. the United States, one of the Gold Standard cases decided in 1935, the Court declared that:

The Constitution gives to the Congress the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States, an unqualified power, a power vital to the Government, upon which in an extremity its very life may depend. The binding quality of the promise of the United States is of the essence of the credit which is so pledged. Having this power to authorize the issue of definite obligations for the payment of money borrowed, the Congress has not been vested with authority to alter or destroy those obligations.

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