Washington, D.C. – Today, the Columbus Dispatch highlighted Sen. Rob Portman’s fight against the Obama Administration’s power grab regarding the debt limit. The Obama Administration’s initial offer in fiscal cliff negotiations gave the President unilateral power to raise the debt limit without any Congressional oversight.
Excerpts of the article included below. Actual article can be found here. The letter, which has now been signed by 43 of his colleagues in the Senate, can be found here.
Columbus Dispatch
Portman resists debt-ceiling proposal
Jessica Wehrman, December 6, 2012
WASHINGTON — Sen. Rob Portman urges President Barack Obama to lay off a White House plan to change the procedure that the federal government uses to raise the debt ceiling.
Portman’s letter came after the U.S. Department of Treasury released a blog suggesting changing the current process — which requires Congress to vote to raise the debt ceiling — with a process in which Congress gains the right to formally “disapprove” of debt-ceiling increases but the president has the power to veto that bill and thus extend the government’s borrowing capacity.
Portman, a former Office of Management and Budget director, circulated a letter protesting that idea among his Capitol Hill Republican colleagues yesterday and planned to send it out at the end of the day.
The Ohio Republican wrote that he believed “that Congress’s power over borrowing, like the power of the purse, is firmly rooted in our constitutional tradition.”
“The Founders understood the potential danger of permitting the Executive to unilaterally incur new public debt,” Portman wrote. “Consequently, Article I of the Constitution empowers only Congress ‘to borrow money on the credit of the United States.’ The debt ceiling is the means by which Congress exercises this inherent legislative responsibility.”
Portman pointed out that Obama, as a U.S. senator in 2006, voted against raising the debt ceiling.
“We believe that preserving Congress’s role in setting the debt limit is necessary to encourage deficit reduction and uphold our constitutional tradition of legislative control over borrowing,” he wrote.
Excerpts of the article included below. Actual article can be found here. The letter, which has now been signed by 43 of his colleagues in the Senate, can be found here.
Columbus Dispatch
Portman resists debt-ceiling proposal
Jessica Wehrman, December 6, 2012
WASHINGTON — Sen. Rob Portman urges President Barack Obama to lay off a White House plan to change the procedure that the federal government uses to raise the debt ceiling.
Portman’s letter came after the U.S. Department of Treasury released a blog suggesting changing the current process — which requires Congress to vote to raise the debt ceiling — with a process in which Congress gains the right to formally “disapprove” of debt-ceiling increases but the president has the power to veto that bill and thus extend the government’s borrowing capacity.
Portman, a former Office of Management and Budget director, circulated a letter protesting that idea among his Capitol Hill Republican colleagues yesterday and planned to send it out at the end of the day.
The Ohio Republican wrote that he believed “that Congress’s power over borrowing, like the power of the purse, is firmly rooted in our constitutional tradition.”
“The Founders understood the potential danger of permitting the Executive to unilaterally incur new public debt,” Portman wrote. “Consequently, Article I of the Constitution empowers only Congress ‘to borrow money on the credit of the United States.’ The debt ceiling is the means by which Congress exercises this inherent legislative responsibility.”
Portman pointed out that Obama, as a U.S. senator in 2006, voted against raising the debt ceiling.
“We believe that preserving Congress’s role in setting the debt limit is necessary to encourage deficit reduction and uphold our constitutional tradition of legislative control over borrowing,” he wrote.
