Another Downside of the 14th Amendment Opinion
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Besides the brazen abuse of authority it would represent, the politics could also backfire badly on the administration, as Ezra Klein points out:
If testing the question wouldn’t cost anything, there would be no harm in trying. But I don’t think it would have no cost. The strength of the Biden administration’s political position is that it stands for normalcy. The debt ceiling has always been raised before, and it must be raised now. But if the administration declares the debt ceiling unconstitutional, only to have the Supreme Court declare the maneuver unconstitutional, then Biden owns the market chaos that would follow. Who will voters blame in that scenario? Republicans, who say they just wanted to negotiate over the budget, as is tradition? Or Biden, who did something no other president had done and failed?
Experts who spoke with Fox News Digital cast doubt on the viability of President Joe Biden invoking the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to raise the federal borrowing limit, each explaining that the likely reason for the law did not quite match the context of the situation.
Top Biden officials have distanced themselves from the idea. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told ABC News’ This Week that invoking the amendment would cause a “constitutional crisis.”
And their hesitation appears to be shared by members of the legal community. Thomas Lee, professor of Constitutional Law at Fordham University, told Fox News Digital, “I wouldn’t call it crazy, because you know, it’s plausible based on a reading of the text, but given the context…I just don’t think it’s the best reading of it.”
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