So are we moving toward a "constitutional crisis"?

The New York Times is reporting that "tensions [are] escalat[ing]" in the negotiations to achieve a resolution to the debt limit debate. "Across Washington, officials were weighed down with a sense that they were hurtling toward a crisis." Nate Silver actually uses the magic words in his column that well spells out how much to the right the House Republicans majority is even as compared with ordinary Republicans in the polity, who are willing to accept modest tax increases, let alone non-Republicans, with regard to their fanaticism about "no tax increases" now or ever. Thus he writes that "a failure to raise the debt ceiling at all [would likely] result[]in some combination of a debt default, a government shutdown, and a Constitutional crisis."

So the "Constitutional crisis" would presumably be the achievement of ultimate dysfunctionality, i.e., the inability of the two Houses of Congress to agree on legislation that would allow the United States to get out of this mess. And the dysfunctionality would obviously be caused, at least in part, by our Constitution and its utter lack of recognition of the role that political parties would play in our political system (as Joey Fishkin noted). If this is in fact the case, then why doesn't Section 4 spring back into life as a genuinely attractive option? The President can go on television on July 30 (or whatever the practicaly last possible moment is) and say that he has been advised by (some of) his lawyers that the Constitution is indeed not a suicide pact and that Section 4 does in fact authorize him to take whatever steps are necessary to leave the national debt "unquestioned."

Why, for example, is that argument weaker than Lincoln's argument in the Emancipation Proclamation, which was one of the world's monumental takings of private property in the name of the war power? FDR, in his 1933 Inaugural address, said that we should treat the Great Depression as the equivalent of war and behave accordingly (even as he rejected calls, by Walter Lippmann among others) formally to claim dictatorial powers. Are Eric Cantor and his minions not engaged in a fundamental war against the American economy, and is it really the case, to return to a previous post, that the only response by the President is to accept Prof. Tribe's altogether cogent arguments and accept our being driven over the cliff? (Or, to stick with the war metaphor, he could engage in basically unconditional surrender to Cantor and say that the Democratic Party will simply withdraw from the scene.)

In our Penn essay, Jack and I suggested that the key evidence for a "constitutional crisis," rather than Tushnetian "constitutional hardball" or a Posner-Vermeule episode of "constitutional hardball" is the movement of a significant number of Americans to the streets threatening a measure of social disorder. That isn't happening yet, but I do wonder what will happen, for example, when social security checks stop being delivered or veterans' programs for our "heroes" are shut down because we can't afford to pay for the treatment they need (and most certainly deserve). There was an interesting piece on NPR this afternoon about a town in Rhode Island that is running out of money to pay its pension obligations. A 90-year-old former public servant pointed out that he relies on his $2000/month pension--he gets no social security, I believe, because the local government, like many governments, chose not to participate in the Social Security system--to pay his $1000/month rent plus food, etc. I presume that Eric Cantor believes that the street is good enough as a place to live, asking people passing by for "alms for the poor."

Perhaps the McConnell option, as cowardly and craven as it is, will be adopted as John Boehner, who appears to be relatively sane, persuades enough of his caucus to vote for it and we'll be "saved." But what if not....?