Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice. Thomas Paine

Congress’ doors are shut. The villains of the piece have gone home to their upholstered hidey-holes to reflect on the outrages they have just perpetrated to the US citizens, the Constitution and the image of the U.S. around the world. Their shameful behaviour in the past few weeks has plumbed new depths in the American political process and exposed the President as a man of weak character and principle; i.e. a politician.

There are two important aspects of this conflict: (1) the unnecessary debate on the subject of debt limits as there are sufficient safeguards against its abuse in current statutes and judicial decisions; and (2) the rise of a resurgent form of Southern racism and fundamentalism masquerading as a ‘Tea Party’.

This not the first time that Congress has wrestled with the notion of ‘balanced budgets’ or debt ceiling. The subject arose periodically since the Civil War and especially in 1941 when Roosevelt needed to fund the Second World War. However, as many observers pointed out, the issue is clearly addressed in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution where it says “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law . . . shall not be questioned”. The fight over the debt is over monies already authorised by Congress and spent as required. The argument is powerful but it might have been challenged. What is more powerful an argument for the irrelevancy of the debate is the exact framework of the Public Debt Law of 1941, embodied in 31 USC 3101, which codifies a national debt limit. That law states that “The face amount of obligations issued under this chapter and the face amount of obligations whose principal and interest are guaranteed by the United States Government (except guaranteed obligations held by the Secretary of the Treasury) may not be more than [some arbitrary huge number] . . . ” N.B. note the words “EXCEPT guaranteed obligations held by the Secretary of The Treasury”. By undeniably clear law as passed by Congress, such obligations are NOT constrained by any so-called debt limit. If you read on to the very next section 31 USC 3102 [Bonds] you will read “With the approval of the President, the Secretary of the Treasury may borrow on the credit of the United States Government amounts necessary for expenditures authorized by law.”[i]

In this section Congress gave the President the express, inherent and unilateral authority to direct the Secretary of the Treasury to incur obligations to cover all expenditures authorized by law, which is to say the sum of the appropriations bills Congress has already passed. These obligations are immune from any so-called debt ceiling limitation.

The US courts have tested such ‘debt ceiling’ laws before. Congress has selective amnesia on this subject. The Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act (P.L. 99-177, 99 Stat. 1038) popularly known as the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act after the names of its principal sponsors, was designed to reduce the federal budget deficit. The law did so primarily by setting rigid deficit limits and authorizing mandatory, across-the-board spending reductions to reach them. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruled that a key part of this mechanism (empowering the Comptroller), the basic concepts embodied in the statute have continued to influence the process for adopting the federal budget. This was settled in Bowsher v. Synar, 478 U.S. 714 (1986) which struck down the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act as an unconstitutional usurpation of executive power by Congress.

The issue of a debt ceiling became moot under Clinton. The federal budget deficit was eliminated during the second administration of President William J. Clinton and there was a three trillion dollar surplus above the balanced budget. That happened because of Democratic-led improvements in the national economy, not because of the threat of automatic spending cuts. The deficit’s elimination was short-lived, as it recurred as a result of reckless spending and tax policies during the administration of President George W. Bush. The current deficit is due almost in its entirety to the Republicans who, without shame or reflection prattle on about ‘balanced budgets’.

So this particular charade enacted in the full glare of world opinion, was largely a battle of words without any legal meaning or purpose. The Republicans were being Mau-Maued by a group of 87 representatives of their own party whose rhetoric was designed to produce a kamikaze effect in Congress. The Republicans are too weak and divided to stop the ‘Tea Party’ people from hijacking their party and the Democrats are too worried about the effects on their constituencies to bother about the economic consequences for the country.

They key to understanding this is to examine just what makes up the Tea Party. The Tea Party is not some conservative fundamentalist populist party. It is the unreconstructed old racist South rearing its traitorous head once again. “The facts show that the Tea Party in Congress is merely the familiar old neo-Confederate Southern right under a new label. The threat of Southern Tea Party representatives and their sidekicks from the Midwest and elsewhere to destroy America’s credit rating unless the federal government agrees to enact Dixie’s economic agenda of preserving defence spending while slashing entitlements is simply the latest act of aggression by the Solid South.”[ii]

The South almost always votes for lower taxes, and is sometimes overridden by the US congress. In 1998 the thirteen State South voted by the required two-thirds margin for a constitutional amendment to require a two-thirds vote of both houses of congress to raise taxes. Southerners voted in favour of this constitutional amendment 90 to 41. In the full House the amendment failed by 238 to 186 opposed, far short of the constitutionally required two-thirds margin.

From the earliest years of the American republic, white Southern conservatives when they have lost elections and found themselves in the political minority have sought to extort concession from national majorities by paralyzing or threatening to destroy the United States. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and 1799 asserted the alleged right of states to “nullify” any federal law that state lawmakers consider unconstitutional. This obstructionist mentality led to the Nullification Crisis of 1832, when South Carolina refused to enforce federal tariffs. Civil War was averted only when President Andrew Jackson, a Southerner himself, forced the nullifiers to back down. In 1820 and 1850 the South used the threat of secession to force the rest of the United States to appease it on the slavery issue. In 1861, the South tried to destroy the United States, rather than accept a legitimately elected president, Abraham Lincoln, whom it did not control.[iii]

Following defeat in the Civil War, the former Confederate states regrouped as “the Solid South,” a one-party region, first Democratic and now Republican, that has tended to vote as a bloc in national affairs. The South sought to block the federal civil rights revolution by a policy of “massive resistance” to court orders ordering racial integration. Some Southern states went so far as to try to abolish their public school systems rather than integrate them.

These are the same people who fought against the teaching of evolution in the schools and who are offended by the notion of abortions; especially state-funding for abortions on medical grounds. These people cannot stomach the notion of a black man occupying the Presidency and that is the glue which binds them together. There is nothing Obama can do, no compromise he can make which will change the way they feel and behave.

The four states with the most Tea Party representatives in Congress are all former members of the Confederate States of America. The states with the greatest number of members of the House Tea Party caucus are Texas (12), Florida (7), Louisiana (5) and Georgia (5). While California is in fifth place with four House Tea Party members, the sixth, seventh and eighth places on the list are taken by two former Southern slave states, South Carolina and Tennessee, and a border state, Missouri, each with three members of the congressional Tea Party caucus.[iv]

These people are racist primitives with a deep hatred of anyone not like them. They are religious fundamentalists, except for the snake worshippers, and base their fundamentalism on the notion that an anthropomorphic white God has ultimate responsibility for their actions. They recognise that they are sufficiently powerless and have given up any personal responsibility for the consequences of their own actions. Their choice in the Manichean split means that God is always on their side.

If one looks at the footage of the crowds surrounding Bull Connor, George Wallace, Lester Maddox and the others the cameramen focus on the police and soldiers ‘abusing the civil rights’ of the protestors. That is an interesting perspective but it isn’t the full story. As a participant in the Freedom Rides and the marches at Selma and Memphis, among others, I can tell you the real picture is the picture of the howling mobs with pickaxe handles and broomsticks standing right behind the police waiting for their turn to ‘abuse the civil rights of the protestors’. These racist crackers are driven by hate. They were proud of their Neanderthal behaviour and bragged about it to each other and to anyone who wanted to hear. These Southern white trash are (were) the scum of the earth, marching under their traitorous flag, and vowing to ‘rise again’. It is difficult to believe that they have changed in the years since these Southern mob scenes, school burnings, lynchings and Southern prison brutalities. The only way to combat these racists is by actually confronting them, giving them no option but to obey the law and the Constitution.

There is no compromise with them, no ‘middle way’. They are the Klan dressed up in baseball caps and tee shirts, pretending racism and American nativism are a philosophical movement. If Obama thinks he can negotiate or appease these primitives he is a bigger fool than everyone believes.

[i] The Pen, OpEd News 30/7/11
[ii] Michael Lind, Salon 2/8/11
[iii] ibid
[iv] ibid

By Dr. Gary K. Busch

Gary K. Busch is an international trades unionist, an academic, a businessman and a political affairs and business consultant for 40 years, and has traveled and worked extensively in Africa.