The Biden administration threatens to invoke Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment to sidestep the longstanding federal debt ceiling in a way that would increase the power of the executive branch. Although largely responsible for the modern debt ceiling, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) would be proud. A US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case decided in FDR’s first term in office, Perry v. United States (294 U.S. 330, 1935), nevertheless brings Biden’s position into serious question.
According to Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe (or perhaps some yet-unidentified person he plagiarized), the federal debt ceiling is unconstitutional because Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees that the United States
