Biden said he hadn't "gotten there yet" when it comes to invoking the 14th Amendment to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt, but he kept the door open during an interview this Friday with MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle:
President Joe Biden said he was not yet prepared to invoke the 14th Amendment to avert a breach of the debt ceiling, but did not rule out the possible executive action ahead of a meeting next week with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
“I’ve not gotten there yet,” Biden said when asked about the possibility in an interview Friday with MSNBC.
The president’s suggestion that he could consider the historically unprecedented legal maneuver if Congress refused to act indicates that views on the possibility may be shifting within the administration.
Constitutional scholars and economists have been split on the maneuver, which would see the administration continue accruing debt by citing a provision of the Constitution that says the validity of public debts “shall not be questioned.”
Biden warned earlier that you can say goodbye to low unemployment and job growth if Republicans get their way and crash the economy on purpose:
President Joe Biden warned that the low unemployment rate in Friday’s jobs report could disappear if House Republicans do not increase the debt ceiling soon.
“Just today they’re reporting 250,000 new jobs,” Biden said at the White House. “The last thing this country needs after all we’ve been through is a manufactured crisis and that’s what this is: A manufactured crisis. That’s what it is from beginning to end, it’s a manufactured crisis driven by MAGA Republicans in the Congress.”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs report on Friday found nonfarm payrolls increased 253,000 for the month, far beating Wall Street estimates of 180,000. The growth puts the unemployment rate at 3.4%, compared to an estimate of 3.6%, tying it for the lowest level since 1969.
Biden praised the figures but warned if Republicans did not agree to lift the debt ceiling and prevent a default, the impact on the economy could be catastrophic. The president cited a recent Moody’s report which showed 780,000 people could lose their jobs if the country were to default on its debt.
Members of Biden's team have been debating whether the debt limit is even Constitutional (something liberals have been debating for years now, along with calls to abolish it to stop Republicans from using it for hostage taking), which Biden either isn't fully on board with yet, or just doesn't want to say it out loud as he gives Republicans one last chance to do the right thing (something he apparently has much more faith in than I do).
The Editorial Board's John Stoehr believes Biden should "ask for forgiveness, not permission" on this issue, and I agree with him there completely:
One thing everyone agrees on is failure to lift the debt ceiling is badbad for everyone for no good reasonreason. So Joe Biden should avoid waiting for permission from the House Republicans. He should pay the country’s debts, then say sorry for stopping a mass global panic.
He won’t have to do that.
What little leverage the House Republicans have (if you can call it that) is presuming the Biden administration will not continue paying off debts without authorization by the Congress. Now, according to the Times, the White House seems prepared to take away even that.
As Stoehr noted, "officials are debating whether to ignore them" and “A group of legal scholars and some liberal activists have pushed the constitutional challenge to the borrowing limit for more than a decade. No previous administration has taken it up."
After discussing the fact that the move is unprecedented, but so is the irresponsibility by Republicans, he continued:
These questions are serious but so are the consequences of betraying the full faith and credit of the United States. I’m no authority on the matter, but it seems to me common sense to think that normal people are not going to wonder about the constitutionality of anything after about $15 trillion in personal wealth around the world goes poofthph
They are going to wonder why Biden didn’t act.
Yep. Call their bluff. Make them defend wanting to crash the world's economy and make them go to court to defend it. It's high time someone put a stop to the hostage taking.
