US Default Fears: As Deadline Nears, Biden Mulls Invoking 14th Amendment Despite Opposition

US President Joe Biden on Tuesday said he is exploring the possibility of invoking the 14th Amendment as a way to work around the debt ceiling if the US Congress does not come through with a plan to raise the debt ceiling. Biden acknowledged that it may not be a viable short-term solution as the US is on track to default if the US Congress fails to act by June, the Hill said in a report.

“I have been considering the 14th Amendment, and the man I have enormous respect for, Larry Tribe … thinks that it would be legitimate,” the US President was quoted as saying by the Hill.

He highlighted that the only problem is that his decision “would have to be litigated” and warned that if not extended then it would “still end up in the same place.”

He said that once the White House and the other lawmakers deal with this task at hand of raising the debt ceiling he will see if the court will rule that the 14th Amendment allows the president to continue issuing debt.

Section 4 of the US Constitution’s 14th Amendment says: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorised by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

“But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”

The Hill in a separate report pointed out that the 14th Amendment primarily deals with granting citizenship and equal protection under the law to all people born or naturalised in the United States, including formerly enslaved individuals.

The Biden administration is mulling on invoking the ‘public debt’ part of the amendment to ward off the threat of US default.

Kevin McCarthy, the US House Speaker, said that Biden would be considered a failure for invoking the 14th Amendment. “If you’re the leader, if you’re the only president and you’re going to go to the 14th amendment to look at something like that – I would think you’re kind of a failure of working with people across sides of the aisle, or working with your own party to get something done,” the US House Speaker said.

It should be noted that Biden’s staffer, US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, has said that any such move would lead to a ‘constitutional crisis’. “There is no way to protect our financial system and our economy other than Congress doing its job and raising the debt ceiling and enabling us to pay our bills. We should not get to the point where we need to consider whether the president can go on issuing debt. This would be a constitutional crisis,” Yellen was quoted as saying by the ABC.

The Harvard Law Professor, Larry Tribe, who Biden invoked earlier was opposed to this idea. In an op-ed in the New York Times, he explained that the right question to ask the US Congress is whether they have the authority to force the President and his administration to follow certain rules or guidelines after Congress has already approved spending bills that have led to government debt.

Questioning the balance of power between Congress and the President in terms of financial decisions, Tribe in his op-ed asked if the Congress can impose limits on the government’s spending by using an arbitrary dollar amount, rather than having control over spending through the budgetary process.

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