On Friday’s broadcast of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) claimed that House Republican leaders “are threatening default if President Biden doesn’t give in to them.” And President Joe Biden should have the option of unilaterally getting the clean debt ceiling increase he wants by invoking the 14th Amendment.
Smith said, “[I]f the choice we have is between default, which would be disastrous, and the President using the clause in the 14th Amendment, which says that the validity of public debt shall not be questioned, we believe strongly — I believe strongly — that he should use that 14th Amendment authority to avoid the disaster of default.”
Later she stated that “we should do everything we can to come to a reasonable agreement. But the challenge we have here, A, is that we have, in the U.S. House of Representatives, leaders that are threatening default if President Biden doesn’t give in to them. They’re suggesting that what we should do in order to avoid default is to throw people and children off of health care, take away their food support. And that is just an unconscionable choice to put us all in and bad for the country.”
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