A growing group of Senate Democrats is urging President Joe Biden to seriously consider invoking the 14th Amendment to declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional, a strategy that — if upheld by the courts — could avert a looming default without any concessions to House Republicans, who have used their slim majority to take the debt ceiling hostage.
“Now, some Democrats are saying the Biden White House should give it a hard look.” This suggests, to my horror, that the Biden White House hasn’t yet given it a hard look.
The time for the hard look was months ago. The time for the Biden White House to say “The US constitution requires the govt to pay its debts, full stop,” was weeks ago. Starting to wonder if anybody in power knows how to play this game. I’m just meek and powerless me, and team Biden might pull a rabbit out of its hat yet (hoping!), but I’m getting a sinking feeling.
The expenditures in our increasing debt were all passed by Congress, including rethug controlled Congresses. Their tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy are a big part of the problem.
It’s on the record. No backsies.
I am surprised that the Discharge Petition that the House Democrats have filed has not gotten the attention it deserves. It requires signatures and already lacks only a few signatures.
“President Biden needs to consider using the 14th Amendment if necessary,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) said in a Thursday statement. “This is the whole reason why the 14th Amendment exists, and we need to be prepared to use it. And, if our unelected Supreme Court Justices try to block the use of the 14th amendment and blow up our economy, that’s on them.”
I admire Fetterman in many respects but he’s missing something here. The financial markets and foreign countries with a stake in the US economy are not going to wait to see which way the wind blows in the Supreme Court. Benefit of the doubt does not exist in financial markets.
Republicans will announce a court challenge the minute Biden invokes the 14th, and the world economy will crash a minute after that. Interest rates will spike worldwide, the dollar will crash, and what’s likely to be a mild recession risks sliding into a full Depression. There isn’t time to litigate this through the courts without that reaction, so invoking the 14th will likely have the same effect as a full default.
Biden and the Dems will need to have a very good explanation for why this happened, and it’s an uphill battle because too much of the public thinks raising the debt ceiling is about spending more money instead of paying for what’s been spent. This may be the best offramp we have, but we’d better be ready for the fallout.
Yesterday morning on NPR (“bastion of liberal thought!”) a host interviewed the Australian ambassador, repeatedly goading him to say that President Biden’s withdrawal from the Quad meeting – in order to stop Republicans from shooting the hostages – was some sort of slap in the face to America’s partners.
He wasn’t having any of it.
After answering the same question, which she insistently posed in at least five (!) different ways, he finally shut her down, exasperated, by saying it was trivial and meaningless, whereupon she gave up and moved on – but not without confirming (for the umpteenth time) that even non-corporate “journalism” will stick with their bullshyte “Dems in disarray!” narrative, come hell or high water.
(If I don’t end up smashing my clock-radio, à la “Groundhog Day”, it’ll be a miracle.)
The 14th Amendment, Section 4, says “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
Does that mean that it shall be questioned, or that it shall not be questioned?
Is there a difference between these?
Is Section 4 simply null and void? Completely meaningless? Were the people who wrote and voted for it wasting their time? Or does it, you know, actually mean something? Could that something be that the validity of the public debt shall not be questioned? Grasping at straws here…
Lawrence has covered the Discharge Petition and even got the Congressman he interviewed to state that the Petition lacks only a few votes. In fact, AOC has mentioned this as well, suggesting that the next step is getting some R’s to sign on.
So what do I see with the show following O’Donnell?
A feckless POLITICO correspondent who tied whatever Biden accomplishes to work-welfare programs as a concession to the Krazies.
The Dems long ago should have strategized for this uneven “coverage”.
And after President Biden was forced to cut short an important G-7 meeting to deal with China’s and Russia’s aggression — which does raise doubts that we’ll be able to continue to lead our global alliance if we can’t even keep the lights on and avoid defaulting — to deal with this made-up debt crisis, the Republicans now say they want to ‘pause’ the talks for now.
Don’t announce it, don’t discuss it, don’t try to bipartisan it…just do it. Learn from the Obamacare missteps. Discussion gives the media time to both sides and horse race it, and for Rs to pound their base with content. Really hoping this is where the administration is at.
It will probably be those last few signatures that will be the issue. Fall short, and it accomplishes nothing. Plus, we still have to be able to pass something in the Senate, with you know who . . . . but I will certainly keep my fingers crossed.
What about the Discharge Petition? I believe that it has been filed…and that it has attracted over 200 signatures…and that AOC mentioned the same thing.
I had surmised that the under-the-radar treatment of the Petition was exactly the result of the poisonous “messengers” (MSM) we have to deal with…
I haven’t yet seen an explanation of the mechanics involved on either side here. IOW, when June 1 comes, or whatever the magic date is, how do bills stop getting paid, or how do they continue to get paid? Either one would be an executive branch decision, right? Congress can’t tell the Treasury to stop paying bills. All they can do is file a lawsuit in federal court.
I suspect that when people say Biden should evoke the 14th amendment, that would be done through an executive order declaring that the Treasury will keep paying the bills because the 14th amendment blah, blah, blah … This charade has gone on far too long. Congress did their part, and boo hoo for them that the current majority doesn’t like it. Bring it, Brandon, and let the repubs whine about it all the way up to the Supreme Court, and then let’s see how the court decides that one law passed in 1917 overrides the numerous directly conflicting budget bills passed since then.
Hopefully we can get it over the top. That sounds like the least-damaging way to resolve this mess.
I’m still hoping for a trillion-dollar platinum coin, because it would make heads explode.
OK, that made me laugh, but in all seriousness, all it does is kick the can down the road again. We really need this shit to be wiped out as an issue once and for all.
You have it exactly right. Here’s how it works mechanically. Biden would simply issue an Executive Order, pursuant to section 4 of the 14th Amendment, directing the Treasury Secretary to continue “business as usual” until Congress passed and the president signed an extension of the Debt Ceiling law. In fact, Biden should issue it before the deadline is reached.
In other words, Biden would trigger the 14th Amendment as a temporary but critical interim measure, which no court would have the authority, let alone the jurisdiction, to prevent.
The Justice Department would then argue that there is no constitutional conflict whatsoever. Rather, the president was simply following the standard rule of statutory construction that when you have two or more statutes that can be read to either be in conflict or can be read to be given effect, you read them to be given as much effect as possible. When a constitutional provision is in the mix, that constitutional provision dictates how you avoid or minimize the conflict. The Latin term for all of this is “in pari materia”— in case anyone is interested!
The use of this approach would not only allow Biden to both save the economy and not directly challenge the Debt Ceiling law, it would also give McCarthy a reason to push back against his hardest right wing faction. Would he take that opportunity? I suspect not, but that would be his problem, not the country’s.
and would “unleash fossil fuels on America,”
This is a really dumb talking point. Americans by and large like their dino-burning cars, and fear change, and hate the idea of being forced to switch to electric cars. Just don’t go there.
Isn’t there also SC precedent that if two federal laws contradict each other, the more recently passed law prevails?
No it doesn’t. Straw man argument.