To answer the sensational question first, I'm going to sigh deeply, and say that even though not raising the debt ceiling would seem to be breaking the law, jail would probably never happen in the present reality. But "could" also means "theoretically possible" and the theoretical is what I'm more interested in, given this unfortunate reality.
As Seneca Doane covered in this diary, the administration appears to have reinforced the idea that they don't know how to negotiate/have pleasant dreams of cat food. They did this by saying unofficially they don't see the platinum coin option as a path they'd ever follow to solve the debt ceiling problem.
I don't actually believe Boehner and company will ultimately refuse to raise the debt ceiling, if for no other reason than their corporate masters won't allow it. But this whole fiasco has gotten me curious about the legal nature of the Republican threats, if their threats were by some chance actually carried out.
Article 4 of the 14th amendment says fairly definitively:
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
So here are my simple and likely hopelessly-naive questions that occur to me after reading Article 4:
- Wouldn't anyone who knowingly and intentionally caused the US to default on its debts by voting "no" on increasing the debt ceiling be guilty of questioning the public debt of the United States, and thus be breaking the law as set forth in the 14th amendment?
- If one violates the Constitution, what's the punishment? Jail? Something else?
- Therefore, if Republican House members caused default by voting "no" on increasing the debt ceiling, wouldn't they be breaking one of the most basic laws of our land and be subject to whatever punishment could legally be meted out?
Now, since the administration appears determined to throw away any leverage regarding the debt ceiling, and doesn't seem to find it terribly worthwhile to put people in jail who destroy the economy, I can't imagine the threat of such punishment ever actually coming up as a negotiating point. But it's fun to imagine. And I'd like to know if it's something that could actually happen if the will was there.
EDIT: Honestly, I'm not so much determined to see Republicans go to jail as I am plain curious about what sorts of legal procedures there would be to address Republican malfeasance on this issue. And thanks to Christy1947's comment below, I'm now persuaded that SCOTUS is likely the only possible legal instrument that could be brought to bear in such a case. Such obvious oversights are the perils of late-night diarying.