Minting the coin is no less absurd than the rest of Biden’s policies
Conn Carroll
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This weekend, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen dismissed suggestions that she could fund the federal government by minting a $1 trillion platinum coin, calling the idea “a gimmick.”
And she has a point.
WHAT IF TRUMP GAVE A BIG POLITICAL SPEECH AND NO ONE CARED?
When Congress passed a 750-page omnibus spending bill in 1996 that empowered the treasury secretary to mint “bullion and proof platinum coins” in denominations “in the Secretary’s discretion,” no lawmakers thought they were voting for the creation of a loophole that would allow the Treasury Department to ignore the federal government’s borrowing limit.
The original legislation, written a year earlier by Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), was intended to let the Treasury Department meet the demand from coin collectors for platinum coins in small enough sizes that they could afford. At the time, the smallest platinum coin available was $600. Under the new law, the Treasury could make smaller, more affordable platinum coins for collectors and make a small profit that would reduce the deficit in the process. Castle’s 1995 legislation was then tucked into the much larger 1996 omnibus appropriations bill.
Could Yellen use the authority granted to her by this statute to issue a $10 trillion platinum coin instead of a $100 platinum coin? After all, nothing in the statute limits her discretion on the denominations that can be minted.
Democrats in Congress and New York Times columnists believe Yellen does have this authority — and that it would be perfectly legal for her to mint a $10 trillion coin and then deposit it at the Federal Reserve, thus giving the Treasury Department plenty of money to pay all of its spending obligations.
Is the #MintTheCoin idea ridiculous? Yes.
But no more ridiculous than what President Joe Biden has done on immigration and higher education.
When Congress passed the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act in the wake of 9/11, lawmakers wanted to help military service members and those in the National Guard make ends meet while they were serving their country during a national emergency. So they gave the president the power to suspend student loan payments for those called to service. The rationale was that while men and women are sacrificing their time to protect us, they should not have to pay their student loans.
But Biden has twisted the language of this statute to justify completely eliminating student loan debt for every borrower in the country.
Is Biden’s student debt amnesty ridiculous? Absolutely.
When Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, lawmakers specifically chose to weaken the president’s power to grant immigrants parole in the United States. Instead of authorizing the president the power to grant parole “for emergent reasons deemed strictly in the public interest,” the IIRIRA narrowed the parole power to “only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons.”
Congress even specifically stated at the time that it was changing the wording to end presidential abuse of the parole power. “In recent years … parole has been used increasingly to admit entire categories of aliens who do not qualify for admission under any other category in immigration law, with the intent that they will remain permanently in the United States. This contravenes the intent of [current law].”
And yet that is exactly what Biden did this month when he announced a new parole program that would bring in 360,000 migrants a year from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Is Biden’s new migrant parole program completely illegal? Yes.
Yellen is correct that #MintTheCoin is a ridiculous gimmick. But you know what? Biden has been governing by gimmick for months.
Why stop now?
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