- Rep. Jamie Raskin told Insider in an interview that Biden should use the 14th amendment to solve the debt ceiling crisis.
- The 14th amendment would declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional and get rid of it forever.
A Democratic lawmaker thinks it's long past time that President Joe Biden start seriously considering alternative routes to solve the debt ceiling crisis without Congress.
Both sides of the aisle have been at odds for months over the best approach to raise the debt ceiling and ensure the government does not run out of money to pay its bills. While Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy recently passed a bill in the House that would raise the debt ceiling through March 2024 accompanied by over $4.5 trillion in spending cuts, Biden and Democrats have remained adamant that they will only support a clean debt ceiling increase, without any cuts attached.
But with an economically catastrophic default as soon as two weeks away, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin told Insider in an interview that it's time Biden invoke a clause in the 14th amendment that would get rid of this crisis forever.
"It's unfamiliar to people because no Congress has come close to driving us off the default cliff the way that Speaker McCarthy has, but I've just wanted to emphasize that there's a constitutional structure to this problem: section four of the 14th Amendment, that says that the validity of the public debt shall not be questioned," Raskin said.
The clause Raskin referenced states that "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." That would mean that a default, and the debt ceiling causing that default, would be unconstitutional.
Still, Biden has cast doubt over going that route to avoid a default that inches closer by the day. He told reporters last week that he had been "considering" the 14th amendment, but "the problem is it would have to be litigated."
Biden said that he doesn't think the 14th amendment "solves our problem now. I think that only solves your problem once the court has ruled that it does apply for future endeavors."
Raskin pushed back on Biden's concerns, saying that the 14th amendment acts as "an operations manual for how the president should respond to extortion and threats by a faction of Congress."
"The question is whether anybody could sue the government for actually meeting the constitutional command by making payments to the creditors of the United States, bondholders, and Social Security recipients," Raskin said. "I'm not sure anybody would even have standing to get into court, and I imagine that the court would consider the whole thing a political question within the province of the executive branch to work out with Congress."
"There's a binding legal requirement to pay bondholders, there's a binding legal requirement to pay Social Security and Medicare recipients," Raskin added. "So the president can't violate those statutory directives, nor can he violate the constitutional command. So a debt limit statute that purports to compel the president to violate the law in the Constitution is of dubious legality."
Biden met with McCarthy and top congressional lawmakers for the second time on Tuesday to attempt to come closer to an agreement on solving the debt ceiling crisis, and it appeared there was still minimal progress toward a deal. Still, McCarthy told reporters he thinks it's still possible to reach an agreement this week — but it's unclear if that deal will include some compromises, like spending cuts on Democratic priorities.
To Raskin, the solution is clear: the 14th amendment "provides the whole structure for resolving the conflict," he said.
"The situation today is similar to what President Lincoln faced when he had to circumnavigate the habeas corpus clause during the Civil War, when he said, shall all of the laws of the United States go unrecognized except for one? Or alternatively, should one law be ignored in order to uphold the whole system of government?" Raskin said. "And the Constitution clearly disfavors an economic default and the resulting collapse in the full faith and credit of the United States."
"That's basically the argument," Raskin continued. "What began as a political fight that became a policy crisis now threatens to become a constitutional collision."