The Ultimate Narcissism: Trump Authorizes A $1 Coin With His Own Image

The following is part of an article by Heather Digby Parton at Salon.com: 

Contrary to popular belief, Julius Caesar was not the first living leader to put his portrait on a coin. A couple of others beat him to it, including Persia’s Darius the Great. But the Roman emperor was the first to break with tradition and distribute them to ensure his subjects understood that he possessed absolute power and, not incidentally, controlled the empire’s money supply. It was a savvy move, copied by monarchs and dictators across the world ever since. 

America has long followed suit, featuring the faces of our leaders on our currency, but with an important caveat: They had to be long out of power and in their graves. No monarchy or dictatorship for us; we were hostile to the idea of minting the portrait of a living leader for the very reason Caesar thought it was such a clever idea. Our Constitution meant to ensure that no one person in American life would ever have sole unlimited power. 

In 1877, Congress even passed a law prohibiting it, which says that “only the portrait of deceased individuals may occur on the United States currency and securities.” Even coins that will be minted for the 250th anniversary of the nation have a special section in the code which states, “No coin issued under this subsection may bear the image of a living former or current President, or of any deceased former President during the 2-year period following the date of the death of that President.”

But that was before we had our own Orange Caesar, who believes he can rule by fiat, supported by Republicans in Congress, and then allow the Supreme Court to sort it out, usually in his favor. 

On Oct. 3 it was reported that the Treasury has designed and prepared to mint a new $1 coin with President Donald Trump’s face in honor of the country’s 250th celebration in 2026. The founders would be so proud to know that we made it that far before we finally succumbed to tyranny.

The front of the coin will feature Trump in profile, with his trademark 1967 Las Vegas lounge act hairstyle delineated in fine detail. The back will depict the famous fist pump pose from his 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, along with the words “fight, fight, fight.” 

When images of the new coin were shared on X, U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach replied, “No fake news here. These first drafts honoring America’s 250th Birthday and @POTUSare real. Looking forward to sharing more soon, once the obstructionist shutdown of the United States government is over.” In true Trumpist fashion, there is every reason to believe the administration will go ahead and mint the coins. By the time it’s litigated, the money will already be in circulation — and that will be that.

This is hardly the most important example from the lengthy list of Trump’s abuses of power. But symbols matter, and this one cuts to the very heart of who he is — and what he fancies himself to be. An emperor or king who rules not by the consent of the governed, but by divine right. . . .

This much is clear: The president has no respect for the American anti-monarchical tradition and style, and he seems to lack any real understanding that it’s our fundamental reason for being. 

Minting Platinum Coins Would Avoid The Debt Ceiling Crisis

 

The extremists in the Republican House are trying to put President Biden between a rock and a hard place. He is required to spend the money Congress allocated, but would not be able to raise the funds to do so if the debt ceiling is not raised. What is he to do?

Ryan Cooper, at MSNBC.com, has a solution. He thinks President Biden should mint platinum coins. It's a bizarre solution, but not more bizarre that the extremist Republicans trying to trash the U.S. economy. Here is part of what Cooper has to say:

There is one aspect of the debt limit issue that has gotten little coverage: It would be just as illegal to obey the limit as it would be to ignore it. If Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling, they will put the president in a bind: requiring him to spend, but forbidding him from borrowing the necessary money. Biden would have no way out — unless he opts for the platinum coin loophole. Without the coin, the president would violate the law one way or another. It’s hard to see why he would choose the option that causes an economic crisis.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that on Thursday the department will begin on various accounting shuffles to stave off actually breaching the debt ceiling, but the tricks are estimated to run out as soon as June. Republicans have not agreed on a set of demands for ransoming the world economy, but some hard-liners have mentioned one dollar of spending cuts for each new dollar of debt, cutting spending back to 2022 fiscal year levels, repeal of new funding for the IRS, and rollbacks of abortion rights. In the meantime, the House GOP is reportedly working up a payment prioritization plan that would defund everything except interest payments on the national debt, Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits and the military.

Basically, they want Democrats to repeal all their hard-won legislation from last year, or to shut off something like a quarter of the government — including “Medicaid, food safety inspections, border control and air traffic control,” per The Washington Post —indefinitely. But any such measures would have to be passed by both Senate Democrats and Biden, both of whom have dismissed any concessions out of hand. Moreover, experts agree that prioritizing payments would be logistically impossible, given the huge volume of payments the government makes every day.

On the other side, during the lame-duck session Congress passed a $1.7 trillion spending bill that keeps the government funded through September, which Biden signed into law on Dec. 29. That’s the legal bind: Congress instructed the executive branch to operate the government at specific spending levels through the end of the fiscal year, but now is refusing to grant it the borrowing authority necessary to carry out its own instructions.

All this is why the famous platinum coin is Biden’s most legally defensible option, despite how silly it sounds. A 1997 law clearly grants the treasury secretary the ability to mint platinum coins of any denomination, in part with the intended purpose of making profit for the government through seignorage. If Congress says that the president must spend, cannot borrow, but can mint, then the way is clear for a legal stickler. Mint a trillion or two in platinum coins, deposit them at the Federal Reserve, and hey, presto, problem solved. Economically, it would be virtually identical to borrowing the money, and presumably at some point the ceiling could be raised and the coin spending replaced with normal debt. . . .

If the debt ceiling is hit, and the coin is ruled out, then Biden must pick which legal violation he will commit. Surely any sane person would choose the option that doesn’t cause drastic and utterly pointless harm to the global economy. That choice becomes even clearer when one considers that the debt ceiling itself is arguably unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, which states, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned.” As President Abraham Lincoln arguedwhen Chief Justice Roger B. Taney tried to stop him from locking up a man accused of treason during the Civil War, “Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated?”

House Republicans, most of whom voted to overturn the 2020 election, are utterly in thrall to QAnon lunatics. They are ignorant and unhinged enough to blow up the world economy either so they can blame it on Biden or simply revel in the resulting chaos and destruction. The idea that it could be a bipartisan vote, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has advocated, is wishful thinking. Something like the platinum coin will very likely be necessary to stave off disaster. Biden must steel himself to break the debt ceiling forever using his own power.

Should The Treasury Mint A Platinum Trillion Dollar Coin?

The Republicans in Congress are currently refusing to raise the government's debt limit, and they are doing it for purely political reasons. They know that defaulting on the government's debt would be disastrous for the economy, but they want to blame Democrats for increasing the national debt -- even though raising the debt limit would not allow any new debt. It would just let the government pay the debt it already has (much of it created by the Republicans). They are hoping Americans are too stupid to know that.

Some have proposed a unique and radical work-around for avoiding default if the debt limit is not raised. They think the government should mint a trillion dollar platinum coin, and use that to pay off existing debt.

Here is just part of what Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman has to say about that idea:

The Biden administration should mint a $1 trillion platinum coin or declare that the Constitution gives it the right to issue whatever debt is needed to fund the government — or use some other trick I haven’t thought of to ignore the looming crisis.

Some background: We all learned in civics class — do students still take civics? — that federal policy on spending and taxing is set by a straightforward legislative process. Congress passes bills and if the president doesn’t veto those bills, they become law. End of story.

But there is, it turns out, a quirk in the budget process: Congress must also separately authorize the federal government to take on more debt.

Historically, this was considered a mere technicality: Of course Congress would approve borrowing if the spending and taxing bills it had already enacted led to a budget deficit. Not doing so would make no sense — not just because it would cripple government operations, but also because it would threaten financial havoc: U.S. government securities are the bedrock of the global financial system, used for collateral in many transactions. Threatening federal cash flows could therefore provoke a worldwide meltdown.

But U.S. politics aren’t what they once were. The Republican Party has become both radical and ruthless; let’s not forget that most G.O.P. legislators refused to certify President Biden’s election. And while this radicalized party cheerfully authorizes trillions in borrowing whenever it holds the White House, it weaponizes the debt limit whenever a Democrat is president. . . .

Republicans are using the filibuster to block an increase in the debt ceiling with only weeks to go before we hit a wall and default on payments — and they aren’t even making specific demands. They simply don’t want to share any responsibility for governing. . . .

So what does this have to do with platinum coins? Well, there’s a strange provision in U.S. law that empowers the Treasury secretary to mint and issue platinum coins in any quantity and denomination she chooses. Presumably the purpose of this provision was to allow the creation of coins celebrating people or events. But the language doesn’t say that. So on the face of it, Janet Yellen could mint a platinum coin with a face value of $1 trillion — no, it needn’t include $1 trillion worth of platinum — deposit it at the Federal Reserve and draw on that account to keep paying the government’s bills without borrowing. . . .

Look, the reason we’re in this situation is that Republicans have learned a terrible truth: Voters don’t know or care about process; they only react to how things are going. The G.O.P. believes that it can benefit from outright, naked sabotage; Democrats shouldn’t worry about undoing that sabotage through whatever tricks they can deploy.

Of course, if the Biden administration does do something unusual to avoid a debt crisis, Republicans will run blistering ads denouncing the action. But they’ll do that anyway! . . .

The Republican faux-outrage dial is already turned up to 11; how much worse can it get?

So go ahead, Democrats, and do whatever it takes to get through this. Gimmickry in the defense of sanity — and, in an important sense, democracy — is no vice.

It's Time For Dollar Coins

The United States government has floated the idea of making the dollar a coin instead of a bill a couple of times now, and it has been a dismal failure. People got a few of the dollar coins (as a collectible item) and then went back to using the old familiar dollar bills. What that proved more than anything is that most people are creatures of habit -- and they are unlikely to change those habits until they are forced to do so.

The fact is that a dollar is not really worth enough to be a bill anymore. When I was a child (and I'll admit that was a long time ago) you could buy more with a quarter than you can today with a dollar. Americans may not want to admit it but a dollar is just pocket change these days.

And they don't want to admit it. A Gallup Poll in 2006 showed that 79% of the American population did not want to go to a dollar coin. Although that dropped to 64% when it was explained how much money the government could save by going to dollar coins and discontinuing dollar bills. I'm not aware of a more recent poll, but a dollar is worth even less now than it was in 2006 (so hopefully attitudes have softened a bit toward the idea of a dollar coin).

How much could the government save? Consider this -- a dollar bill have a life expectancy of about 40 months (slightly over 3 years), but a coin will last for many decades. The Government Accountability Office says the government could save about $5.5 billion over a period of 30 years. Now that's not going to balance the budget by itself -- far from it. It's just a little over $183 million each year. But why should we spend $183 million each year when we don't have to (and when it really doesn't accomplish anything). After all, a few million here and a few million there adds up to real money before long.

I think it's definitely time to go to a dollar coin, but the government needs to do it right this time. When they introduce the coin they need to stop making the dollar bills. Don't give people the choice. In a few years people will accept it -- and most will wonder why they ever thought the dollar should be made out of paper in the first place.

Today's dollar is just pocket change (and it's value won't rise in the future). We need to admit this and make it the coin that it should be. And the nice part is the government will be saving money -- millions of those dollar coins each year (and that makes a lot of sense in this recession).