A Constitution Coin Question?
mrcommem
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I was looking for something about powers of the Congress over coinage and discovered a few problems with our current coinage. Here is all the Constitution says about the money power of the government. From Article I, Section 8, there is “Congress shall have Power…to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin.” And from Section 10, “no state…shall make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.” That’s 27 words, some of them offbeat or capitalized like in German, pertaining to monetary policy in the founding document of the government of the United States.
How is it that you and I can pay state taxes in something other than gold or silver? Looks to me to be a blatant act against the Constitution to allow such a practice. Aren't our elected officials sworn to uphold the Constitution and Laws of the United States? Why has our Justice department allowed this law to be broken?
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Its not just you and I. In the Constitution it says all payments to the States shall be in gold or silver.
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That horse left the barn long ago.
Nothing in that precludes a state from accepting other firms of payment. It's just adding that they can't make something else legal tender.
The Constitution is probably the most ignored document in the world next to the Bible.
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The Constitution also states that Federal law is the "supreme law of the land" and whenever a Federal law conflicts with a state law, the Federal law wins. Furthermore, the Constitution is a living document, meaning that the original text as ratified in 1788 can (and has been many, many times) changed by Congress.
Also, the original Constitution mentions a bit more on monetary policy than the 27 words that you chose.
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One can not join the Air Force because the Constitution only mentions the Army and the Navy.
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Though I am far from an expert, the way I read it requires taking the whole section in context. The idea was that states could not issue unlimited credit, for examples gobs and gobs of Continental Currency, and thus risk creating and economic crisis. So the federal government is going to be in charge of money. There’s nothing written here that says the states cannot accept the federal government’s form of money, whatever that may be.
It does seem to say if the states were to issue their OWN “legal tender” it would have to be gold or silver, but given the previous section somehow this would have to be something other than “coin”.
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I suppose the old days of the gold standard and silver certificates sort of acknowledged that. But all that went out the window decades ago.
It exactly says that. It says tender not legal tender. Tender means "offer as payment". It doesn't get any more exact than that.
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It says "make...a tender" not "allow to be tendered". What it is forbidding is a state mandating a form of payment ("legal tender") other than silver and gold not accepting a form of payment other than silver and gold. In other words, a state could not mandate tobacco as the means of paying debts. Why would they do that? Because they controlled the tobacco trade.
In short, the States are free to accept any method of payment they choose. The States are NOT entitled to force the method or payment other than silver and gold.
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/article-i/clauses/767