Why do Democrats take the debt ceiling debate seriously? Mint the coin already. That's what the Republicans would do if they had a legal way to force their priorities on the rest of us. #MintTheCoin #DebtCeiling
Because enough of them are sufficiently sane and informed to realize that unilateral control over the money supply, with democratic processes cut out of the discussion, is bound to be catastrophic in the long run?
Money supply is controlled by the Fed, not Treasury. The Treasury minting a coin and depositing it with the Fed per se doesn't increase money supply in the economy.
That's a complicated relationship, and the independence of the Federal Reserve means that going that route becomes legally fraught, fully embracing the idea that not even the executive branch, much less the more democratic legislative branch, should have control over the country's finances.
@volkris "Money supply" and "the country's finances" aren't the same thing. The Fed controls the former, Congress controls the latter. This is why the Fed is responsible for managing inflation and interest rates, not Congress. And Congress is responsible for raising taxes and allocating money for spending by the executive branch, not the Fed.
I never said they were the same thing.
In fact, I switched to talking about the second specifically because they weren't the same thing, as the relationship between the Fed and the Treasury is a complicated one that it wasn't really necessary to address here.
But having the Feds override the fiscal checks and balanced between the legislative and executive branches is a dangerous direction to go.
As you said, the Fed controls the money supply, and as an independent entity, it has effective unilateral control over that, by definition.
Anyway, the debt ceiling is a legislative branch check on executive branch behavior.
Anything that would undermine the debt ceiling short circuits that check.
We shouldn't want the executive branch to have unlimited ability to borrow on the credit of the US, which is exactly why that issue was constitutionally divided between the two branches.
@volkris Treasury minting a trillion dollar coin is not "the Feds overriding the fiscal checks and balances between the legislative and executive branches," though. It's a case of Treasury exercising its legal powers. Your original (inaccurate) objection was that doing so gives someone "unilateral control over the money supply." It doesn't.