Presidential Bootstrapping

Let's try out a thought experiment. Suppose the President and Congress are at loggerheads over how the next census should be conducted. As a result, the President vetoes Congress's appropriation for the census. The veto is not overridden. He then responds that he must take unilateral action to conduct the census as he sees fit because the Constitution requires a decennial census. Structurally, this must be wrong. Affirmative presidential opposition to affirmative congressional efforts to carry out its mandatory obligations cannot create new unilateral executive authority. If I'm right about this, then that's helpful in determining whether the President can act unilaterally to make debt payments if and when we next hit the debt ceiling. Even assuming that Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment applies, the President will have unclean hands if he vetoes a bill lifting the debt celling and then uses that as the basis to impound funds elsewhere to make the scheduled debt payments.The…

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