On the menu today: President Biden said he’s now considering an option that his own secretary of the Treasury labeled “a constitutional crisis” just two weeks ago; House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has surprisingly positive polling numbers for a Republican speaker during a high-stakes budget showdown; and the Harvard-Harris pollster concludes, “Biden’s approval on management of key issues is weak across the board.”
Biden: Eh, Maybe We Can Issue Our Own Debt without Congress after All
President Biden is now “looking at” an option that his own secretary of the Treasury labeled “a constitutional crisis” just two weeks ago.
Biden, at a press conference during the G-7 meeting in Hiroshima, Japan, Sunday:
I’m looking at the 14th Amendment, as to whether or not we have the authority. I think we have the authority. The question is: Could it be done and invoked in time that it could not — would not be appealed and, as a consequence, pass the date in question and still default on the debt. That’s a question that I think is unresolved.
Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, appearing on ABC News This Week, May 7:
STEPHANOPOULOS: [Biden] said on Friday night that he’s not ready to invoke the Fourteenth Amendment. Of course, the Fourteenth Amendment says that full faith and credit of the United States should not be questioned. And the implications to that would be, if he invoked it, the United States would just continue to issue debt, saying it’s unconstitutional not to. Now, the president said he’s not ready to do that. But it didn’t seem like he took it off the table. So, is it still a possibility?
YELLEN: Look, you know, our priority is to make sure that Congress does its job. There is no way to protect our financial system and our economy other than Congress doing its job and raising the debt ceiling and enabling us to pay our bills. And we should not get to the point where we need to consider whether the president can go on issuing debt. This would be a constitutional crisis. [Emphasis added.]
What’s more, at the beginning of May, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the administration would not “entertain scenarios” where the executive branch unilaterally decides to keep issuing debt beyond the limit set by the debt ceiling:
Q: Is there — there’s no executive order or any sort of executive action that could be taken, either through the Treasury or the President, to avoid a default?
JEAN-PIERRE: So, Con- — again, I’m going to sound like a broken record, as I have been for the past several months: Congress must act. We will not entertain scenarios where Congress compromises the full faith and credit of the United States.
And now, about three weeks after his press secretary insisted there would be no entertaining of these sorts of scenarios, Biden says he’s now looking at that option. To quote the climax of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., “How’s that for entertainment?”
Yesterday on Meet the Press, Yellen was a bit more circumspect:
Well, “extraordinary measures” is used in a different way, but there has been much discussion of the 14th Amendment. And, as President Biden said I believe this morning, it doesn’t seem like something that could be appropriately used in these circumstances, given the legal uncertainty around it, and given the tight timeframe we’re on. So, my devout hope is that Congress will raise the debt ceiling, and we’ll pay all of our bills.” [Emphasis added.]
First, that’s a curious way for the Treasury secretary to characterize the president saying, “I’m looking at the 14th Amendment as to whether or not we have the authority — I think we have the authority.” Maybe Yellen is like the rest of the White House staff, who frequently act as if Biden does not really speak on behalf of his own administration.
Second, Yellen’s words aren’t explicitly calling that option unconstitutional, but predicting that the courts would strike it down is a backdoor way of admitting it is likely to be ruled unconstitutional.
The argument from certain progressive Democrats is that the Biden administration should just ignore the debt limit, set at $31.4 trillion, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden in December 2021, and just keep on borrowing. This would represent President Biden hand-waving away Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which declares,“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” There are no ifs, ands, or buts about the congressional power of the purse in that section.
The 14th Amendment says, “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.” Certain liberals are choosing to pretend the words in that amendment mean that the president can issue as much debt as he likes however and whenever he likes, ignoring the laws of Congress. Imagining that the executive branch can unilaterally issue new debt in violation of existing law is power-of-the-purse-snatching and transferring control of the U.S. government’s spending from the legislative branch to the presidency. This proposal is not just a little bit unconstitutional, it is spectacularly, bombastically, grandiosely, in-your-face unconstitutional.
And our Andy McCarthy points out another glaring flaw in this proposal: Who would buy U.S. debt that has not been authorized by Congress?
The president begins his term by taking an oath before God and his country to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. As Charlie Cooke has carefully observed, Biden has an infuriating habit of initially recognizing that a particular proposal would violate the Constitution, saying so publicly, feeling pressure from his party’s hard left, and then buckling and agreeing to attempt or enact that unconstitutional change, with very little logical explanation of how a particular move magically became constitutional all of a sudden. He caved on court-packing. He caved on the filibuster. He caved on the eviction moratorium and on the vaccine mandate and on student loans. This week, he’s refusing to rule out raising the debt limit without Congress. This is the guy who was supposed to save us from Donald Trump?”
When Does the Conventional Wisdom around Kevin McCarthy Get Revised?
Maybe House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a bit like Bruce Willis’s character in Pulp Fiction. His biggest advantage is that everyone keeps underestimating him.
In the YouGov poll of registered voters, Kevin McCarthy is rated favorable by 46 percent, and unfavorable by 36 percent. This weekend’s Harvard-Harris poll has McCarthy at 34 percent favorable, 33 percent unfavorable. More on that survey below.
You can see from the coverage that President Biden and congressional Democrats did not expect to be in this situation; they apparently believed that House Republicans would be crippled by infighting and internal divisions, and at some point, McCarthy would have no choice but to offer the metaphorical unconditional surrender of a “clean” debt-ceiling increase, with no conditions or trade-offs.
Politico: “How Dems ended up where they swore they wouldn’t be: Negotiating on the debt limit”
NPR: “Democrats, worried about a Biden-McCarthy deal, push a backup plan to avoid default”
The Hill: “Democrats warn Biden against cutting debt ceiling deal with McCarthy”
Axios: “Democrats float scheme to protect McCarthy from debt ceiling revolt”
The debt-ceiling fight is far from over, but Democrats are belatedly realizing they needed a strategy beyond “sit back and wait for McCarthy to fumble.” That’s likely one reason for this bizarre, last-minute White House interest in a magic-wand solution that it spent the past few weeks insisting wasn’t a solution.
Also notice the U.S. Senate adjourned Friday and is not scheduled to return until May 30, although Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did instruct members to be ready to return to Washington within 24 hours. Much like President Biden’s trip to Asia, it is more than a little contradictory for Democrats to insist that the country is on the brink of economic Armageddon, but they still get to maintain their normal travel and recess schedules.
Pollster: ‘Biden’s Approval on Management of Key Issues Is Weak Across the Board’
You can talk yourself into believing that Joe Biden is in a strong position for reelection.
Incumbents start with a lot of advantages. A Democratic president running for reelection is almost certain to win the New England states (except maybe New Hampshire and one of Maine’s congressional districts), New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware; then Virginia, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico; and the three West Coast states and Hawaii, adding up to 221 electoral votes. States such as Nevada, New Hampshire, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are usually competitive but Democratic-leaning. Winning those would put Biden at 265 electoral votes, meaning he would need just one of Georgia, Nevada, or Wisconsin to surpass 270 electoral votes and win another term.
Unemployment is currently low, the Covid-19 pandemic is in the rear-view mirror, and the GOP has its own divisions and candidates who would be weak in a general election.
And yet . . . Biden’s poll numbers are just terrible. This weekend’s Harvard-Harris poll is just a buffet table of bad news for Biden and the White House. Sixty percent of voters think the country is on the wrong track; this measurement was briefly in positive territory early in Biden’s term but took a severe turn for the worse around the Afghanistan-withdrawal debacle and never recovered. Sixty-two percent think the U.S. economy is on the wrong track, and the same percentage characterize the U.S. economy as “weak.” Nearly half of respondents, 49 percent, say their personal financial situation is worsening, and just one-quarter say it is improving. This is likely because when respondents were asked an open-ended question about what “the most important issue facing the country” was, 34 percent said inflation.
As the pollsters summarize, “Biden’s approval on management of key issues is weak across the board.”
ADDENDA: Thanks to Michael Smerconish for having me on his CNN program Saturday morning to discuss New Hampshire’s rogue Democratic primary,
Late last week, in that other Washington publication I write for, I wrote about how the massive payments to Biden family members from foreign businessmen are significant and troubling, even if House Republicans can’t prove a quid pro quo crime yet. (You’d be surprised how many non-conservatives reached out to say they are concerned.)
Whenever I write something that irks right-of-center readers, someone out there will contend that I’ve changed, and that while I used to be conservative, now I’m selling out, and appearing in the Post and my biweekly appearances on Meet the Press Now are evidence that I am now assimilated into the leftist Borg.
Check out what I write about for the Washington Post and see if it looks to you like I’m trying to suck up to some sort of liberal-progressive intelligentsia:
- The payments to Biden family members.
- New Hampshire Democrats’ quiet Cold War with Biden over their first-in-the-nation primary status.
- How Biden avoids the press with minimal consequences.
- How the Biden administration’s confident statements about the Chinese spy balloon were quietly walked back, weeks later.
- The grim outlook for Chicago under its new mayor, Brandon Johnson.
- How even Democratic governors are looking for ways to move migrants from their states to cities such as Chicago and New York.
If I’m supposedly consumed by a desire to fit in with liberals, why am I always telling them things they don’t want to hear? If you run around saying I’m trying to ingratiate myself with progressives, then you’re obligated to at least concede that I’m doing an absolutely terrible job at it.
And you’ll notice that I write things that some conservatives, and in particular Trump fans, don’t want to hear, here at National Review.
Let me just put out this crazy theory: You should be told what’s going on, whether you like hearing it or not.