7/2/2023 0 Comments 12 minutes from now![]() ![]() She declined to rank where invoking the 14th Amendment would fall in the list of options if Congress failed to act. “It’s legally questionable whether or not that’s a viable strategy.” It’s not a short-run solution,” Yellen said at a news conference in May when asked about the 14th Amendment. “There would clearly be litigation around that. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who has warned lawmakers that the government may default on its obligations as soon as June 1, also poured cold water on the idea. “I’ll be very blunt with you, when we get by this, I’m thinking about taking a look at, months down the road, as to see whether what the court would say about whether or not it does work,” Biden said earlier in May after meeting with congressional leaders about the impasse. The president acknowledged as much, saying that he doesn’t think it would solve the current problem. ![]() Were Biden to invoke the 14th Amendment to allow Treasury to borrow above the debt ceiling to pay the nation’s obligations, it would almost certainly prompt a constitutional crisis and swift legal action. “The federal government is required to pay the debt on time in full,” said Epps, who has long supported using this option in the event Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling. The section was designed to remove debt payments from potential post-war partisan bickering between the North and South, but it also applies to the wide divide between Democrats and Republicans today. Lawmakers who crafted the amendment are very strongly saying that once the US borrows money, it has to pay it back, said Garrett Epps, a constitutional law professor at the University of Oregon. “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,” reads the section, which refers to the debt incurred by the Union to fight the Civil War. Tribe of Harvard Law School, point to Section 4 of the amendment as the basis of their argument that the president has the authority to order the nation’s debts be paid regardless of the debt limit Congress put in place more than 100 years ago. How could a 145-year-old change to the US Constitution that gave citizenship to former slaves serve as a path out of the debt ceiling drama? Government officials and legal authorities are divided over whether it does.
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