The argument that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional, coming just as the United States is inching closer to the possiblity of default due to a stalemate in negotiations, seemed a little too convenient for me at first. But Jack Balkin, who has been one of the more eloquent voices of a "liberal originalism" challenging conservatives' interpretation of the Framer's original intent, makes a compelling case that the entire point of the 14th Amendment was to avoid the sort of grandstanding we're seeing right now:
No changes were made to Section 4 in the House of Representatives. Representative Thaddeus Stevens, in introducing the measure to the House, remarked on it only briefly: "The fourth section, which renders inviolable the public debt and repudiates the rebel debt, will secure the approbation of all but traitors." Id. at 3148. The House passed the final version on June 13. Id. at 3149.
What do we learn from this history? If Wade's speech offers the central rationale for Section Four, the goal was to remove threats of default on federal debts from partisan struggle. Reconstruction Republicans feared that Democrats, once admitted to Congress would use their majorities to default on obligations they did disliked politically. More generally, as Wade explained, "every man who has property in the public funds will feel safer when he sees that the national debt is withdrawn from the power of a Congress to repudiate it and placed under the guardianship of the Constitution than he would feel if it were left at loose ends and subject to the varying majorities which may arise in Congress."
This all seems pretty academic though. For the most part, this has a profoundly risk-averse administration, and it's hard for me to imagine the president deciding to engage in this kind of confrontation. But I wouldn't be shocked to see a Republican president do it next time he or she has to ask a Democratic Congress to agree to raise the debt ceiling.
