If you want a measure of how the growing radicalism of the Democrats threatens our constitutional system of government, consider Minnesota senator Tina Smith and Massachusetts senator Ed Markey. Both just hopped aboard two different misguided crusades at once: the so-called 14th Amendment option on the debt ceiling and Court-packing. Taken together, these progressive schemes would permanently damage Congress and the Supreme Court and bring us closer to personal rule by the president.
The “14th Amendment option” involves the president unilaterally seizing the powers of Congress, which alone has the constitutional power to borrow money or raise revenue. As Saikrishna Prakash explained in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Joe Biden could seriously destabilize the credit markets if he issued bonds without the authorization of Congress: “If Mr. Biden borrows money by executive fiat, the U.S. would be in dangerous and uncharted territory. . . . Purchasers of these Biden bonds would be assuming an enormous risk. Because the 14th Amendment refers only to debt ‘authorized by law,’ the government could repudiate the Biden bonds. In fact, because there is no lawful authority to pay interest on them, there would be no legal way to repay buyers of his bonds.”
No responsible adult would want to go down that road, but Tina Smith is no responsible adult. She told bomb-throwing SiriusXM leftist Dean Obeidallah that “the 14th Amendment must be seen as a viable and real option.” She’s not the only one: The office of John Fetterman has joined Smith, Markey, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley, Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Jack Reed, and Peter Welch in calling on Biden to “prepare to exercise your authority under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.” The fact that Biden has no such authority is beside the point. The spectacle of United States senators demanding that the president simply seize control of the powers of Congress would make James Madison weep.
Meanwhile, Democrats are still dabbling in Court-packing as a threat to break the independence of the judiciary and its adherence to the written Constitution. On Tuesday, Markey yet again reintroduced a bill to pack the Court with additional justices, joined by Smith and three members of the House: Hank Johnson, Adam Schiff, and Cori Bush. (It is unclear if Johnson is worried that adding too many justices might capsize the capital.) The push is joined by Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro Choice America, if you had any doubt what this is really about. Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice, was quoted saying, “To have Planned Parenthood and NARAL stand here today and say part of the response to the Dobbs ruling needs to be structural reform of the Supreme Court is a game changer. I think it will have a huge ripple effect in terms of building more support.” Not coincidentally, it is also pro-abortion groups that turn out to be the big funders behind Fix the Court, the other major pro-“Court reform” organization.
If it takes burning down our system to get what progressive Democrats want, they will do it. They’re not even hiding it.