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Class Seven-- Thursday, January 11, 2018
Today we will take up examples of budgetary emergencies. The first is the problem of government shut-downs, a topic explore in Briefing Paper No. 10. Our second topic is the debt ceiling. Here start your readings with Michael W. McConnell, The Origins of the Fiscal Constitution & Howell E. Jackson, The 2011 Debt Ceiling Crisis Revisited, from Is U.S. Government Debt Different (2012). You should also read over pages 18-62 of Jeremy Kreisberg & Kelley O'Mara, The 2011 Debt Limit Impasse: Treasury's Actions & The Counterfactual - What Might have Happened if the National Debt Hit the Satutory Limit (September 4, 2012) (Briefing Paper No. 41). See also Jack Lew's 2016 law review piece on Managing our National Debt Responsibly. Team Assignment (Teams C2G2): Please be prepared to assess whether the Secretary of the Treasury should invest effort in a contingency plan to prioritize federal expenditures in a more rational manner should another debt ceiling crisis occur during the next presidential administration. Assuming the Department were to develop such a contingency plan, what system of prioritization should plan follow? As a continuation of some of the issues we have been exploring earlier this week, I've attached as background reading a recent draft article by Professor Zachary Price on Funding Restrictions and Separation of Powers (forthcoming 2018).
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