President Obama has more than a few congressional GOPers shaking in their boots with his threat to not pay Social Security checks after August 2 if Republicans don’t cave in to his demand that they support tax increases and hiking the national debt limit.
It’s a variation of the familiar Democratic tactic that has worked so often in the past. But here’s how Republicans can snatch the Social Security weapon right out of Obama’s hands: Congress has all of the ultimate weapons in any showdown with the president or the federal judiciary, thanks to its status as the First Branch and the one that controls the federal purse strings.
So when Obama threatens not to pay Social Security checks on time, the proper response of congressional Republicans should be to pass emergency legislation directing the Secretary of the Treasury to pay interest on the national debt, Social Security and Medicare, active-duty members of the military and government bond-holders before any other government bills are paid.
Of course, the Senate Democratic majority won’t go along with this and even if it did, Obama would veto such legislation if it reached his desk. But that’s exactly the point – Make congressional Democrats and Obama explicitly choose not to pay Social Security, et. al. so that the responsibility for that decision is clear.
Congressional GOPers have got to rediscover the power of Congress and be willing to use it if they are ever to start winning real and enduring victories against Big Government.
My friends at The Wall Street Journal have rightly observed that “the entitlement state can’t be reformed by one house of Congress in one year against a determined president and Senate held by the other party. It requires more than one election.”
But one house of Congress can assert congressional perogatives and thereby expose Obama’s threat for what it is and thereby make crystal clear the choice voters will confront in November 2012. And in the process lay the foundation for beginning the repeal of the bankrupt Welfare State in 2013.
