Yellen: 14th Amendment Can’t Be Appropriately Used to Raise Debt Ceiling

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that President Joe Biden can not invoke the 14th Amendment to address the debt ceiling under the current circumstances.

Anchor Chuck Todd said, “Does the 14th Amendment fall under the category of extraordinary measures?”

Yellen said, “Well, extraordinary measures is used in a different way, but there hasn’t been much discussion of the 14th Amendment, and as President Biden said, I believe this morning, it doesn’t seem like something that could be appropriately used in these circumstances given the legal uncertainty around it and given the tight timeframe we’re on. So my devout hope is that Congress will raise the debt ceiling and we will pay all of our bills.”

Todd said, “Are you going to pay all of our debts and then let the court tell us we shouldn’t have if we breach the debt ceiling? I understand wanting to use it now, but are we really going to sit there and let bills go unpaid and not even trying this?”

Yellen said, “We take the debt ceiling seriously as constraint on our ability to pay bills that are coming due and my assumption is that if the debt ceiling isn’t raised there would be hard choices to make about what bills go unpaid.”

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