Professor of Constitutional Law, Thomas Lee, explains why President Joe Biden invoking the 14th Amendment to the Constitution to raise the federal borrowing limit would be unlikely to hold up.
“As applied to what President Biden might do today, it would be a unilateral presidential action, without congressional authorization…I don’t know exactly what that would be. He can’t borrow money to pay the debt: Congress has the power ‘to borrow Money on the credit of the United States’ under Article I, Section 8. I’m not a finance expert and so other than borrowing money, I am not sure exactly what the President could do to ‘ensure the public debt of the United States shall be questioned,’” Lee said.