Obama Doesn't Rule Out Using 14th Amendment To Raise The Debt Limit

[aGameOfThrones]

With the October 17 deadline to raise the debt limit rapidly approaching, President Obama is not specifically ruling out using the 14th Amendment to increase the nation's borrowing ability if the political impasse continues and Congress fails to do so, but says he does not expect the fight to get to that point.

"I'm pretty willing to bet that there are enough votes in the House of Representatives right now to make sure that the United States doesn't end up being a deadbeat. The only thing that's preventing that from happening is Speaker Boehner calling the vote," the president told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that was released this morning.

Four days into the government shutdown, the president reiterated that he is not going to make concessions on his signature health care law or negotiate with House Republicans until they agree to reopen the government and raise the nation's debt ceiling.

"The only thing that is keeping that from happening is Speaker Boehner has made a decision that he is going to hold out to see if he can get additional concessions from us," Obama told the Associated Press' Julie Pace.

"What I've said to him is we are happy to negotiate on anything," he continued. "But what we can't do is keep engaging in this sort of brinksmanship where a small faction of the Republican Party ends up forcing them into brinksmanship to see if they can somehow get more from negotiations by threatening to shut down the government or threatening America not paying its bills."

The president went on to criticize some Tea Party Republicans for seeking out controversy.

"I recognize that in today's media age, being controversial, taking controversial positions, rallying the most extreme parts of your base - whether it's left or right - is a lot of times the fastest way to get attention or raise money, but it's not good for government. It's not good for the people we're supposed to be serving," he said.

http://gma.yahoo.com/obama-doesnt-rule-using-14th-amendment-raise-debt-155614987--abc-news-politics.html

[Zippyjuan]

The section some have been refering to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiv


Section 4.

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. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.


One look at possible options: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/us/politics/experts-see-potential-ways-out-for-obama-in-debt-ceiling-maze.html?_r=0


WASHINGTON — Even as President Obama insists that he would be powerless to save the economy from catastrophe should Congress fail to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, some law professors say he does have options. They may be politically unattractive, unpalatable to the financial markets and subject to legal challenges, these experts say, but these choices are better than failing to live up to the nation’s financial commitments.

The view that Mr. Obama could continue borrowing without Congressional authorization is based on three arguments.

One is grounded in an aggressive understanding of presidential power, the second in an interpretation of an obscure provision of the 14th Amendment and the third on a choice among three irreconcilable constitutional obligations.

A senior administration official was dismissive of all three options, calling them “unicorn theories,” reflecting the White House’s position that only Congress can solve a problem of its own creation.

“The Constitution gives Congress — not the president — the authority to borrow money, and only Congress can increase the debt ceiling,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said on Thursday, adding that Congress must “authorize the Treasury to pay the bills that Congress racked up.”

But Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said that the meaning if not the words of the Constitution left Mr. Obama with room to act.

“The president has inherent emergency powers,” he said. “It has long been understood that the president should act to protect the country.”

That is the broadest option for Mr. Obama. The second is based on the actual text of the Constitution, though there is a dispute about what the words in question mean. Section 4 of 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.”

The provision, adopted in 1868, was meant to ensure the payment of Union debts after the Civil War. But it was written in more general terms, as the Supreme Court once noted in passing. “While this provision was undoubtedly inspired by the desire to put beyond question the obligations of the government issued during the Civil War,” Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote in 1935, “its language indicates a broader connotation.”

On Thursday, Mr. Carney dismissed the argument, popular in some legal circles, that the amendment authorized the president to raise the debt ceiling.

“We do not believe that the 14th Amendment provides that authority to the president,” he said. He added that the meaning of the provision had divided constitutional scholars. That alone, Mr. Carney said, “means that it would not be a credible alternative.”

Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, is one of the skeptics who agrees with the White House. “The president should hold firm,” he said, “and not permit Congress to insist on holding its breath rather than doing its job of authorizing payment of the debts it has already incurred unless and until the president blinks on one of his signature initiatives.”

The third alternative, the subject of a 2012 article in The Columbia Law Review, focuses on what the article’s authors call the irreconcilable instructions Congress will have provided to Mr. Obama if it fails to act. Having been told to spend, but not to raise taxes or issue debt, “the president has to decide which of Congress’s orders to follow,” said Neil H. Buchanan, a law professor at George Washington University, who wrote the article with Michael C. Dorf, a law professor at Cornell. The president must, in the article’s words, “choose the least unconstitutional option.”

That option, the authors concluded, is issuing more debt.

“Anything you do that’s remotely realistic is going to be unconstitutional,” Professor Dorf said. “But the president should still try to minimize the constitutional violation.”

Professor Posner countered that the article was unrealistic. It would be political suicide, he said, for Mr. Obama to announce that he was violating the Constitution.

Professor Tribe also rejected the idea, saying it was proposed by “otherwise very sensible law scholars” who in this case had concocted “a prescription for a free-for-all that abandons the rule of law.”

[Danke]

And the 14th A wasn't even properly ratified. It was under occupation, i.e. duress.