Representative Chip Roy (R., Texas) said Thursday he does not believe President Biden will use the 14th Amendment to avoid a debt ceiling standoff with House Republicans. Roy warned that if Biden went down that road, Republicans in Congress would “blow crap up.”
The comment came during an NRPlus call with Rich Lowry on Thursday when Lowry asked if Roy believes Biden will argue that the 14th Amendment allows the president to continue issuing debt because of a phrase in the amendment that says the public debt “shall not be questioned.” While the Obama administration floated this plan as an option during a similar standoff in 2011, they ultimately dismissed it. Now, Biden said he is “considering” employing such a plan.
“I don’t think so,” Roy said. “The people downtown and the people that know the White House, even on the other side of the aisle, don’t think so. I think they realize even that that’s a bridge too far.”
Roy noted there are things Democrats “ultimately cannot do” without Republican support.
“At the end of the day, they cannot deal with the funding bill at the end of September without us,” he said. “They know that if they go down that road with this 14th Amendment argument, we will blow crap up. I’m serious — it will be just open warfare in terms of what we’re going to deal with on the spending front if these SOBs try to go down this completely . . . unconstitutional and stupid road.”
Roy said that while he would not put anything past Biden and the Democrats to get what they want that, “I think hopefully there’s a point at which even this president and these leftists around him will see the need to, particularly heading into a presidential cycle next year find a way not to be that radical.”
Biden said Tuesday that he has been “considering the 14th Amendment” as the country is on track to default without congressional action by June. The president noted a “man I have enormous respect for, Larry Tribe . . . thinks that it would be legitimate.”
Tribe, a Harvard law professor, recently shifted his stance on the idea, writing in an op-ed for the New York Times: “The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.”
However, in 2011 Tribe wrote that the 14th Amendment couldn’t be used to ignore the debt limit.
Biden expressed some reservations, saying the issue would “have to be litigated and in the meantime without an extension it’d still end up in the same place.” He said he would look at the issue “months down the road.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy scorned the idea.
“Really think about this, if you’re the leader, if you’re the only president 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,” he said.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday that the country ” should not get to the point where we need to consider whether the president can go on issuing debt. This would be a constitutional crisis.”
Yellen would not say that the idea was not being considered but called it “one of the not good options” if Congress does not act.