Since going off the gold standard in 1971, our money is based on happy thoughts and pixie dust. The nationdebt has consequently ballooned to the point it can never be paid off, but the system in place necessitates it never be fixed since trying to do so will make it crash. Our US economy is a ponzi scheme in every sense of the term. So when politicians try 'cutting back' it isn't out of any realistic plan of paying off the debt but a political maneuver to attack opposition and win votes from supporters.
The debt can't be paid off. But if we don't raise the limit every year everything collapses around the world like it almost did in 2008. If our lenders quit lending to us everything collapses including their economies. So the national debt goes up inifinitely regardless of what we do. If we did anything to pay it off we'd crash the global economy.
Cutting back programs doesn't effect the debt in any significant way, it's just political attack on your opponents. If you're worrying about this sort of thing you're entirely ignorant of how the US and global economy actually works. Things are so off the charts bad, worrying about Food Stamps, Medicare, and the like is like worrying about about drowning in "Butch Casidy and the Sundance Kid" when they're peering over the cliff about the jump. It's not the drowning idiot, it's the fall that's gonna kill ya.
Is the government in violation of Art 1 section 10?
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
NO, they are not. Because realize that that section of the COTUS is giving a specific power to the federal government, and denying that power to the states.
For example, CA can not print up there own legal tender.They do not have the authority to do so, nor any other state of course.