Obama and The Fourteenth Amendment

Col Robert Gould Shaw: What are you doing?
Col Montgomery: Liberating this town in the name of the republic
--Glory

Rumor has it that the Obama administration is pondering raising the debt ceiling without Congress's approval by evoking the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified by the states in 1868. The amendment contains five sections, with the fifth merely stating that Congress has the power to enforce the other four sections via legislation. The sections seem unrelated unless one considers that the amendment was passed not long after the end of the Civil War.

Although it is the shortest, the first section is the section that has attracted perhaps the most attention over the years. It specifies that those who are born or naturalized in the United States are US citizens, that states cannot take away priviledge of citizenship, that states cannot deprive people of life, liberty, or property without due process of law (famously known as the 'due process clause'), and that states cannot deny people equal protection under the law (the 'equal protection clause').

The second section lifted the 'three fifths' limitation in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 2) for apportioning House seats for Congress. Prior to the Fourteenth Amendment, those 'bound to service for a term of years (i.e., slaves) carried only a 3/5 weighting when determining House seats compared to people who were not slaves who received a weighting of one.

The third section prohibited those who participated in rebellion against the US (e.g., fought for South during Civil War) to hold federal or state government office--unless Congress voted to remove the disability (which it did in 1898).

It is the fourth section that the Obama administration has been scrutinizing. The fourth section reads:

"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payments of pensions and bounties of services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation occurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of a slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void."

The fourth section is clearly focused on debts incurred during the Civil War, with the basic interpretation being that debt incurred by the North is valid while that incurred by the South is invalid. The administration is apparently focusing on the idea in section four that "the public debt of the United States...shall not be questioned" as a possible justification for bypassing Congress and raising the debt ceiling by edict.

This would be a gross 'out of context' interpretation of the Constitution and its amendments (something, of course, that the Left is prone to do).

More importantly, it would also be an expression of imperial power, something that the founders clearly feared.

We should fear it too.