It's possible. Click here also.
The denial of a raise in the debt ceiling may violate the following language in the 14th Amendment:
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.
Bruce Bartlett and Garrett Epps have been raising this issue:
Bartlett argues that the potential consequences of a debt default amount to a threat to national security and might justify such action:
. . . it’s worth remembering that the debt limit is statutory law, which is trumped by the Constitution which has a little known provision that relates to this issue. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment says, “The validity of the public debt of the United States…shall not be questioned.” This could easily justify the sort of extraordinary presidential action to avoid default that I am suggesting.
And the Supreme Court might be deferential to the president:
Given that the Supreme Court in recent years has been unusually deferential to executive prerogatives –I feel certain President Obama would be on firm constitutional ground should he challenge the debt limit in order to prevent a debt default. Should the Court rule in his favor, the debt limit would effectively become a dead letter. Is that really the outcome Republicans want from a debt limit showdown?
He digs into particulars here.
Garrett Epps makes the same point:
Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment states, at its outset, that "[t]he 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." This section was inserted into the Amendment because of a very real concern that Southern political leaders, and their Northern allies, would gain the upper hand in Congress in the 1866 or 1868 elections and vote to repudiate the national debt.
The Lincoln administration had borrowed freely to finance the war machine. As Reconstruction dawned, white Southerners complained bitterly that they would now be taxed to repay the funds that had been borrowed to defeat their cause. "What, ruin us, and then make us help pay the cost of our own whipping?" one asked a Northern journalist in 1865. "I reckon not."
Southerners were used to having their way in Congress--they had dominated the institution from 1787 until secession in 1861--and many believed that when their representatives arrived in House and Senate, they would be able to tear up the nation's IOUs.
Section Four was the response; its language is extraordinary. First, it does not simply say that the national debt must be paid; it says that its "validity ... shall not be questioned." Only one other section of the Constitution--the Thirteenth Amendment's proclamation that "[n]either slavery nor involuntary servitude ... shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction"--is as unqualified and sweeping.
Second, it suggests a broad definition of the national debt: "...including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion."
From this language, it's not hard to argue that the Constitution places both payments on the debt and payments owed to groups like Social Security recipients--pensioners, that is--above the vagaries of Congressional politics. These debts have to be paid, the argument would be, in full, on time, without question. If Congress won't pay them, then the executive must.
Obama was a constitutional law professor so he is certainly aware of this argument. Perhaps he's picking a fight.
- US Public Debt.
- CRS Report: The Debt Limit.
- Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917.
