President Joe Biden confirmed that he is floating the idea of utilizing the 14th Amendment to work around congressional gridlock on raising the debt ceiling, The Hill reported.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Biden invoked legal scholar Laurence Tribe's recent editorial in The New York Times, where he backed the theory, which claims the president can unilaterally raise the limit under certain circumstances.
"I have been considering the 14th Amendment, and the man I have enormous respect for, Larry Tribe ... thinks that it would be legitimate," Biden said, citing the article.
"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."
According to Tribe, the theory is that Section 4 of the 14th Amendment precludes the "validity" of the public debt from being questioned.
Therefore, he argued, Congress set the debt up to fail when it first established a debt ceiling in 1917 because the limit would force the U.S. to stop borrowing to honor its debts if it ever was reached.
But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., scoffed at the idea outside the Capitol on Tuesday.
"Really think about this," McCarthy said. "If you're the leader ... and you're going to go to the 14th amendment to look at something like that — I would think you're kind of a failure of working with people across sides of the aisle or working with your own party to get something done."
The Republican-controlled House has proposed its Limit, Save, Grow Act of 2023 to solve the debt crisis. Alternatively, the Democratic-led Senate released an economic report condemning the proposal.
Republicans are seeking to make significant inroads to slash government spending in their proposal — a move that Democrats said should take a backseat to pass a "clean" debt ceiling measure.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.