Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., a key ally of President Joe Biden, called on him to use an untested legal strategy to avert a debt default: using the 14th Amendment to circumvent Congress if House Republicans and the White House fail to reach a deal to raise the debt ceiling.
“I would hope that the president will take executive action if the House refuses to do its job,” Clyburn, the assistant House Democratic leader, told Andrea Mitchell in an interview on MSNBC Thursday.
With negotiations between Biden and Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy stalled, some Democrats in Congress and legal experts have proposed using the 14th Amendment, which they believe would allow Biden to raise the debt ceiling through executive authority. A clause of the 14th Amendment states the “validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payments of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”
“The president is responsible for making sure that the full faith and credit of the United States is not jeopardized. If Congress will not act — in this instance, the House of Representatives — maybe he should take the actions that are necessary,” Clyburn said.
With the comment, Clyburn becomes one of the most high-profile voices in his party to endorse using the 14th Amendment, as a June 1 deadline looms to raise or suspend the nation’s borrowing limit.
Clyburn’s endorsement of then-candidate Biden was critical to his campaign-saving victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary in 2020, and he continues to hold sway with the president.
Clyburn also urged then-President Barack Obama to invoke the 14th Amendment in 2011 during that debt ceiling standoff.
“I have been considering the 14th Amendment,” Biden told reporters Tuesday after a meeting with Speaker McCarthy and top Congressional leaders at the White House yielded little progress towards a deal to address the debt ceiling. “But the problem is it would have to be litigated. And in the meantime, without an extension, it would still end up in the same place.”
But it’s unclear if top officials in the administration believe invoking the 14th Amendment to circumvent the debt limit would sustain legal challenges. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen cast doubt on the idea Thursday in Japan for a meeting of G7 Finance Ministers, calling it “legally questionable.”
McCarthy has promised to oppose that option and said Tuesday that it would represent “a failure of working with people across the sides of the aisle or working with your own party to get something done.”