Don’t Combine a Constitutional Crisis and Debt Default
Invoking the 14th Amendment and ignoring the debt ceiling wouldn’t restore investors’ confidence in US public debt.
Better to cut a deal.
Photographer: Victor Blue/Bloomberg
President Joe Biden and Republican leaders in Congress made next to no progress in their debt-ceiling talks last Tuesday, and talks planned for Friday were postponed. They’ll try again this week. For the moment, both sides seem willing to hit the imminent deadline for resolving their dispute without giving way — hoping to blame the damage on the other side. Readiness to inflict needless harm on the country seems to be the one thing they agree about.
As a result, attention is turning to the mechanics of fiscal breakdown, and what might be done to avoid the worst when the ceiling is reached. Biden says he’s considering invoking the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, one part of which holds that “The validity of the public debt … shall not be questioned.” Some lawyers see this as sufficient authority for the executive branch to ignore the debt-ceiling law.