The debt ceiling debate: A game of chicken vs. the 14th Amendment

The Debt Ceiling Escape Hatch 

By DAVID FIRESTONE, NYT

Last year, when House Republicans pushed the government to the point of default by threatening not to raise the debt limit, there was a lot of frantic talk about using the Constitution as an escape hatch. Because the 14th Amendment prohibits any action that raises doubt about the public debt, the theory went, President Obama could declare the ceiling unconstitutional and simply ignore the House's threat.

The idea was endorsed by Bill Clinton and several economic scholars, but it never really caught on among elected Democrats. Mr. Obama expressed skepticism about it, and Democratic leaders - who lack the confrontational DNA of their Republican counterparts - decided not to push it.

But now that Speaker John Boehner is promising a rerun of the whole fiasco within the next year, the Constitutional option is starting to have a little more appeal. On Wednesday, in a meeting with a group of columnists, Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, urged the president to use the 14th Amendment to protect the nation's credit from another extortion attempt.

"You cannot put the country through the uncertainty" again, she said, according to Matthew Yglesias of Slate.

(More here.)