Republicans and Democrats deadlocked as US debt ceiling deadline nears - live
14.18 BST Yellen shoots down invoking 14th amendment to solve debt crisis
The deadlock between Democrats and Republicans over raising the debt ceiling has gone on for months, and the stakes could not be higher. If an agreement is not reached by as soon as 1 June, the United States could default on its bond payments and other obligations, with potentially catastrophic implications for the economy.
There are plenty of issues in Washington over which the two parties cannot agree, but the high consequences of a failure to raise the debt limit has some scholars arguing that Biden should invoke the 14th amendment to order the Treasury department to continue paying its bills, even if the ceiling isn’t increased.
This weekend, prominent liberal constitutional scholar Laurence H Tribe wrote of his support for the solution in the New York Times:
The question isn’t whether the president can tear up the debt limit statute to ensure that the Treasury Department can continue paying bills submitted by veterans’ hospitals or military contractors or even pension funds that purchased government bonds. The question isn’t whether the president can in effect become a one-person Supreme Court, striking down laws passed by Congress. The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding. There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no. And there is only one person with the power to give Congress that answer: the president of the United States. As a practical matter, what that means is this: Mr. Biden must tell Congress in no uncertain terms — and as soon as possible, before it’s too late to avert a financial crisis — that the United States will pay all its bills as they come due, even if the Treasury Department must borrow more than Congress has said it can.
In a Sunday interview with ABC, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen was pressed on whether Biden would consider following the advice of Tribe and others. The answer was pretty much no.
Here’s a clip of the exchange:
Source: The Guardian US
