Democrats say Obama should invoke 14th Amendment

JIM ABRAMS

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — House Democ­rats said Wednes­day that Pres­i­dent Barack Obama should invoke a little-known con­sti­tu­tional pro­vi­sion to pre­vent the nation from going into default if Con­gress fails to come up with a plan to raise the debt ceiling.

Rep. James Clyburn of South Car­olina, a mem­ber of the Demo­c­ra­tic lead­er­ship, said he told fel­low Democ­rats that Obama should both veto any House GOP plan for a short-term exten­sion of the debt ceil­ing and invoke the 14th amend­ment, which says that the valid­ity of the nation’s pub­lic debt “shall not be questioned.”

The White House has rejected resort­ing to this tac­tic to keep the nation from default­ing, ques­tion­ing its legal­ity, but Rep. John Lar­son of Con­necti­cut, who chairs the Demo­c­ra­tic cau­cus, said “we’re get­ting down to deci­sion time” and “we have to have a fail­safe mech­a­nism and we believe that fail­safe mech­a­nism is the 14th Amend­ment and the pres­i­dent of the United States.”

Lar­son said Clyburn’s pro­posal on the 14th Amend­ment was met with applause by other Democ­rats at their meeting.

White House spokesman Jay Car­ney, asked about Clyburn’s pro­posal, said only Con­gress has the author­ity to extend the government’s bor­row­ing author­ity. “The pres­i­dent does not have author­ity to raise the debt ceil­ing. It’s not a plau­si­ble way to address this prob­lem and we do not think it is an option,” he said.

The Demo­c­ra­tic lead­ers said the vast major­ity in their party still sup­port a plan for rais­ing the debt ceil­ing and cut­ting spend­ing put forth by Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid. But they said the inabil­ity of the gov­ern­ment to pay its debts could drive up inter­est rates and affect mil­lions of Amer­i­cans forced to pay higher mort­gages and higher inter­est on stu­dent loans.

Rep. Xavier Becerra of Cal­i­for­nia, the assis­tant cau­cus chair, said Democ­rats are telling Obama, “Mr. Pres­i­dent, Repub­li­cans through their fail­ure have given you license to do what­ever it takes to not let the Amer­i­can fam­ily go down into that abyss with House Republicans.”

The post-Civil War 14th Amend­ment guar­an­tee­ing cit­i­zen­ship to all peo­ple born or nat­u­ral­ized in the United States con­tains a pro­vi­sion that “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.”

Some legal schol­ars have said the pres­i­dent can invoke that clause to keep the nation from default­ing on the debt, although there is no legal prece­dent for such an action.

Posted by AP News on Jul 27 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.