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President Biden will not invoke the 14th Amendment to keep the United States from defaulting June 1 if a deal hasn’t been struck. Negotiations with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have been slow and difficult so he had wondered whether that could be done to go around Congress. Both parties criticized using it. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen didn’t think it was a good idea, neither did legal experts.
Biden backed down
There’s a particular section that reads, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned.” But Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said on CNN, “I think the president and secretary have been clear that that will not solve our problems now. So, yes, that is a no. The 14th Amendment can’t solve our challenges now. Ultimately, the only thing that can do that is Congress … raising the debt limit.”
Several Senate Democrats on the other hand wrote a letter to urge him to “prepare to exercise your authority under the 14th Amendment … preventing a global economic catastrophe.” Republicans and legal experts thought there would be problems for the president if he used it.
“No.” Deputy Treasury Secretary @wallyadeyemo tells me definitely the Biden administration will not invoke the 14th Amendment even if there is no deal to raise the debt ceiling by June 1st. @USTreasury pic.twitter.com/9EldBpMYhC
— Poppy Harlow (@PoppyHarlowCNN) May 26, 2023
Biden dividing opinions
Leadership and those in legal studies are coming down on either side. New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thought he should do it. Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe wrote a New York Times essay saying why he should.
Tribe thought that “Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — [cannot] invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.” But Richard Epstein of New York University Law School told the Daily Caller that this would be an “impeachable offense.”
This purported 14th Amendment loophole would reduce the separation of powers doctrine to junk bond status.Barack Obama previously rejected this theory and said that Congress had to give him the authority to raise the debt limit. https://t.co/oTx9EHDZzH
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 22, 2023
Biden told it’s not an option
Andrew McCarthy of National Review Institute said “any debt [Biden] issued based on this deeply flawed interpretation of the amendment would be worthless.” Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, thought it would turn the separation of powers into “junk bond status”.
Neither Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell nor Lauren Boebert of Colorado thought it should be done. Boebert said, “Congress — not the President — has the power to enforce Section 4.” Republicans will not approve anything that doesn’t have sufficient cuts in spending.
