What the 14th Amendment Really Says

The ‘14th Amendment Option’ Is a Trap for Biden.

The debt talks are stalled and President Biden is again threatening to invoke the Constitution’s 14th Amendment to pay interest on America’s debt without Congress raising the debt ceiling. The truth is that the Treasury has more than ample revenue coming in each month to avoid defaulting on the debt, and Mr. Biden doesn’t need to distort the meaning of the 14th Amendment to do it.

He’s confusing the public, and he may be confused himself, about what the 14th Amendment really says and how it affects the debt ceiling. Section 4 of the Amendment says that the “validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law . . . shall not be questioned.”

This means the Treasury cannot repudiate debt held by the public as issued in Treasury bonds and notes. In practical terms this means Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen must prioritize debt repayment once statutory federal outlays exceed federal revenue. In other words, she and Mr. Biden can’t willfully default even for a time without violating the 14th Amendment.

If he borrows money without congressional approval, the U.S. could later repudiate that debt.

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What the 14th Amendment doesn’t allow is the claim by many progressives that the President can issue new debt without the consent of Congress. Merely because Congress has approved new spending doesn’t mean the President can issue new debt on his own authority to finance it. He can’t issue new debt on his own to finance Medicare, for example.

As Article I of the Constitution makes clear, that power belongs to Congress.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last month mustered the votes for a bill to raise the debt ceiling, thanks in no part to his Democratic colleagues. President Biden has called the House GOP’s bill “wacko” and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said that its adoption would mean “real pain for American families.”

Messrs. Biden and Schumer evidently think the bill’s policy and spending reforms—i.e., tying welfare payments to work and capping annual growth in discretionary spending—are unreasonable.

While Democrats are preoccupied with who will lose the benefits of higher spending, the real debate requires looking at the private spending the Fed will have to crowd out with higher rates if federal spending isn’t constrained.

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