{"id":38705,"date":"2023-05-08T15:29:25","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T20:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=38705"},"modified":"2023-05-08T15:29:25","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T20:29:25","slug":"the-14th-amendment-option","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2023\/05\/08\/the-14th-amendment-option\/","title":{"rendered":"The 14th Amendment Option"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Benen summarizes<\/a> the use of the 14th Amendment to obviate the debt ceiling crisis:<\/p>\n

\n

Circling back to our\u00a0recent coverage<\/a>, the 14th Amendment solution is sometimes derided as a \u201cgimmick<\/a>,\u201d but it\u2019s rooted in a relatively straightforward reading of the constitutional text, which states that \u201cthe validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the validity of the debt, under constitutional mandate, can\u2019t be questioned, then it\u2019s not up to Congress to pass legislation \u2014 it\u2019s up to the executive branch to simply honor the nation\u2019s obligations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And political consequences:<\/p>\n

\n

I won\u2019t pretend to know what would happen then, but Laurence Tribe, a professor emeritus at Harvard, wrote a New York Times\u00a0op-ed<\/a>\u00a0on the subject over the weekend, concluding, \u201cThe right question is whether Congress \u2014 after passing the\u00a0spending bills<\/a>\u00a0that created these debts in the first place \u2014 can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding. There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no. And there is only one person with the power to give Congress that answer: the president of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, here\u2019s another angle to keep in mind as the process moves forward: If this were to work out, and the 14th Amendment were to supplant the debt ceiling statute, it wouldn\u2019t just resolve the ongoing crisis we\u2019re facing now, it would also end all future debt ceiling standoffs going forward.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

I still expect to see this when I look out the window.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Yes, there is something like institutional cognitive dissonance<\/em> going on in Congress, a credible notion until one realizes that this institutional creature has a relatively short renewal time of two years, and the conservatives have become far-right extremists. The view that Congress is telling the Executive to spending too much money, without giving it permission to fulfill obligations incurred is entertaining, but something of an illusion.<\/p>\n

But what’s catching my attention is that Benen doesn’t mention the end point of a Court-driven approach to the debt ceiling crisis: SCOTUS<\/strong>. What will a conservative wing, riven with scandal and, if they were honorable, embarrassment, do if faced with such a partisan issue?<\/p>\n

Punt?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Benen summarizes the use of the 14th Amendment to obviate the debt ceiling crisis: Circling back to our\u00a0recent coverage, the 14th Amendment solution is sometimes derided as a \u201cgimmick,\u201d but it\u2019s rooted in a relatively straightforward reading of the constitutional text, which states that \u201cthe validity of the public \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38705"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38708,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38705\/revisions\/38708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}