(Reuters) - The Obama administration's opening bid on Thursday in negotiations to avert a year-end fiscal crunch included a demand for new stimulus spending and authority to unilaterally raise the U.S. borrowing ceiling, a Republican congressional aide said.
Yes, Obama is asking Congress to hand over their Constitutional authority, the "power of the purse." This is one of the most important checks and balances between the three branches of government and must not be handed over.
"It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fear for the safety of our rights; that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no farther, our confidence must go....
In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution."
--Thomas Jefferson, "The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Annals of America, 4:65-66)
This would be a gross aggrandization of power, even if it were done by a President Romney. The Congresscritters had better stand their ground and not yield on this.
