Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution states:

“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned…”

In recent decades, the Republican Party has repeatedly threatened not to raise the debt ceiling, leaving the US Government unable to pay its bills. Turning the public debt of the United States into a political football and repeatedly threatening the nation with economic calamity, clearly violates the Constitution.

In recent decades, the Republican Party has repeatedly threatened not to raise the debt ceiling, leaving the US Government unable to pay its bills. Turning the public debt of the United States into a political football and repeatedly threatening the nation with economic calamity, clearly violates the Constitution. In the Supreme Court case Perry v. United States, the court wrote that:

“By yirtue of the power to borrow money “on the credit of the United States,” Congress is authorized to pledge that credit as assurance of payment as stipulated,–as the highest assurance the Government can give, its plighted faith. To say that Congress may withdraw or ignore that pledge, is to assume that the Constitution contemplates a vain promise, a pledge having no other sanction than the pleasure and convenience of the* pledgor.”

For Congress to pledge payment through contracts, appropriations and bond sales, but then withdraw said pledge via failure to raise the debt ceiling, clearly violates both the language, and the spirit of the ruling in Perry and the 14th Amendment.

Click here to read the rest of this essay at the Otter Globe & Intelligencer