Around this time 12 years ago, as congressional Republicans launched the most serious debt ceiling crisis in U.S. history, Bill Clinton endorsed a relatively straightforward solution: The former president said the Obama White House should point to the text of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, ignore the debt ceiling statute, and continue to honor the nation’s obligations whether GOP lawmakers approved or not.
As scuttlebutt surrounding the idea gained traction — it was known at the time as the “constitutional option” — Barack Obama was pressed for a reaction. He made clear that he had no intention of seriously pursuing it.
“I have talked to my lawyers,” the then-president said, and “they are not persuaded that that is a winning argument.”
More than a decade later, there’s another group of Republicans threatening to impose an economic catastrophe, there’s another Democratic president looking for a solution, and there’s another public conversation about using the 14th Amendment to diffuse the GOP’s default bomb before it detonates. This time, however, the White House seems to have a different group of lawyers. Reuters reported:
President Joe Biden said on Friday he was not yet ready to invoke the 14th Amendment to avoid the United States defaulting on its debts as early as June 1, comments which for the first time suggested he has not ruled out the option. “I’ve not gotten there yet,” Biden said in an interview with MSNBC when asked about the possibility of invoking the amendment.
To be sure, the Democrat covered quite a bit of ground during his interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, but those five words — “I’ve not gotten there yet” — stood out for a reason: While Obama closed this door during the debt ceiling fight in 2011, Biden has left it wide open. The incumbent president obviously didn’t come right out and embrace the provocative tactic, but there’s a sizable gap between “I’ve not gotten there yet” and…
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