President Joe Biden told reporters at the G-7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan that he has the authority to invoke the 14th Amendment to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling, his strongest comments to date on the subject.
Biden, who is returning to the United States Sunday to resume debt-ceiling negotiations that have faltered, has previously said he is considering invoking Section 4, which reads: “The validity of the public debt of the United States…shall not be questioned.” However, many constitutional scholars have condemned the idea the president has unilateral power to borrow, with Stanford Law professor Michael McConnell calling it “dangerous nonsense.”
“I’m looking at the 14th Amendment as to whether or not we have the authority — I think we have the authority,” said Biden. “The question is, could it be done and invoked in time that it would not be appealed, and as a consequence past the date in question and still default on the debt. That is a question that I think is unresolved.”
According to the president, all four congressional leaders agreed the nation would not default in meetings with him, which would render invoking the 14th-Amendment moot. “So I’m assuming that we mean what we say and we’ll figure out a way to not have to default,” Biden said.
While the idea was previously considered when the Obama administration faced a default in 2011, it was promptly ruled out. Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe is one prominent name to change his mind, arguing in the New York Times that Congress cannot “invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.”
Senator Bill Cassidy (R., La.) said on CNN’s State of the Union that Biden should focus on cutting a deal instead of considering unconstitutional proposals.
“It’s one more example of the president taking the constitutionally-delegated authority of spending from the House of Representatives and trying to kind of aggregate it to the White House,” explained Cassidy.
“I think the president needs to show leadership…Meet the American people and Republicans where they are [and] I think we can get to where we need to be,” Cassidy said, calling the 14th-Amendment talk a “dodge.”
Appearing on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) said he’ll be speaking to Biden soon but confirmed negotiations have gone in the wrong direction.
“For 97 days he ignored me. We were in a good place. He goes overseas and now he wants to change the debate,” McCarthy said of the Biden’s posture in the negotiations. “That’s not healthy.”
The House speaker suggested Biden caved in to pressure from the left wing of the party.
“The pivot has really been after Bernie Sanders had his press conference,” McCarthy said, referring to the Vermont senator’s Thursday call for Biden to invoke the 14th Amendment.
“The president’s budget actually proposes spending more money than we spent at the height of the pandemic. We just can’t afford to keep borrowing from China and be more dependent and create more inflation,” McCarthy said.
“We only have 11 days to go,” the speaker said, adding that he won’t give up on his desire to rein in spending.