Markey: Biden Using 14th Amendment Necessary if GOP Not Reasonable

[mystery-ak]

Markey: Biden Using 14th Amendment Necessary if GOP Not Reasonable

Pam Key 18 May 2023

Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Katy Tur Reports” that President Joe Biden should use the 14th Amendment to address the debt ceiling if Republicans are not reasonable.

Markey said, “I would ask when you put up that poll that you also put up the identical poll on tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires and trillions of dollars that have been given to them over the last five years.”

Tur said, “The majority of Americans agree that millionaires and billionaires should be taxed as well, that is true.”

Markey said, “Put it on the table, let’s have a reasonable negotiation, let’s have all of the causes of the increase in the public debt be discussed. Instead, it’s a one-way street, and to me, it’s just something which is unacceptable.”

He added, “Taxes for the very wealthy are never going to be on the table. We know that. Any more than cuts in defense spending are ever going to be on the table. The Republicans don’t want to look at the two main causes for the increases in our public debt, and then they want to turn to the poorest in our society and punish them for the conditions that they have very little control over. So it’s just so imbalanced in terms of what the negotiation is right now, as we’re hearing it, that the 14th Amendment should sit there as the last resort, but a necessary resort if the Republicans are not reasonable, and I don’t believe that the right-wing Republicans in the House of Representatives will allow that to happen.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/05/18/markey-biden-using-14th-amendment-necessary-if-gop-not-reasonable/

[mountaineer]

Jonathan Turley
@JonathanTurley
President Biden is continuing to invoke the dubious 14th Amendment claim that he can effectively raise the  debt ceiling without congressional approval. https://foxnews.com/politics/biden-declares-himself-blameless-us-defaults-debt-ive-done-my-part
 It is constitutionally and logically flawed despite growing Democratic support.
8:09 AM · May 21, 2023

[Kamaji]

The president, as such, has no authority to implement or enforce the 14th Amendment without appropriate legislation from Congress.  It's right there in the language of the 14th Amendment itself.

[mountaineer]

The president, as such, has no authority to implement or enforce the 14th Amendment without appropriate legislation from Congress.  It's right there in the language of the 14th Amendment itself.

It appears the Dems in Congress - the ones wailing for "implementing the 14th" - are okay with that. Yay, dictatorship is fun!

[Kamaji]

It appears the Dems in Congress - the ones wailing for "implementing the 14th" are okay with that. Yay, dictatorship is fun!

Of course, because they think that the Constitution only embodies left-wing democrat party priorities, and therefore is only to be respected when it can be used to challenge something that conflicts with their policy goals.

[mountaineer]

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1660315010663596037

[Hoodat]

Increasing the debt ceiling doesn't have a damn thing to do with honoring the debt.  No one is questioning the debt.  It is the President's job to pay it.  Congress has already appropriated the money for the remainder of the fiscal year to retire any bonds that become due.  The President can either follow through with the money he has, or he can choose to default on that and use the money for other things.  And nowhere in that does increasing the debt ceiling come into play.

[mountaineer]

Horowitz: No, there’s no 14th Amendment power to mortgage our future with debt
Op-ed
Daniel Horowitz
May 19, 2023

Democrats are getting desperate. For the first time in a generation, thanks to the power conservatives secured in the House during the speaker debate in January, House Republicans are so far holding the line on a major inflection point. They passed a consensus Republican bill to condition raising the debt ceiling on commonsense reforms, spending cuts, and elimination of the Green New Deal. Democrats thought House Republicans would blink, but they are standing firm as the only body capable of passing a bill. So now a bunch of Democrats are demanding that Biden press the panic button of “invoking the 14th Amendment.” Of course, there is zero constitutional basis for what they are suggesting.

Earlier this week, a group of liberal senators penned a letter to Biden asking him to unilaterally incur more debt by invoking the 14th Amendment’s language that says “the validity of the public debt, authorized by law … shall not be questioned.” ...

The entirety of the 14th Amendment was in reaction to the Civil War and everything leading up to it, which is why most of it deals with the rights of freed slaves and punishing rebels who served in the Confederate government. Section 4, which they are invoking, is an extension of Section 3 in its design to negate any influence from the Confederate rebels. The amendment’s authors didn’t want future Congresses to nullify the debt incurred to win the Civil War, which was feared as a tool of retaliation for any future pro-Confederate southern representatives who were unhappy with the outcome of the war.

Indeed, this is why the original language of Section 4 actually directly addressed the war. “The obligations of the United States, incurred in suppressing insurrection, or in defense of the Union, or for payment of bounties or pensions incident thereto, shall remain inviolable,” read the original version proposed June 8, 1866.  ...

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