BLUF: President Biden must be careful in spending money ordered by Congress as the government cannot legally borrow more, leading to a red light/green light dilemma – a misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment permits endless debt without authorization, but the plain language only authorizes debt created by legal authorization.
In a dilemma similar to a traffic light with both red and green lights on, President Joe Biden faces the challenge of spending money that Congress has ordered to be spent, but that the government cannot legally borrow, leading to debt that currently stands at $31.4 trillion. The Constitution only allows Congress and the states to coin gold and silver as money to prevent government debt, so the Lincoln administration’s issuance of paper greenbacks and personal income tax during the War Between the States violated the Constitution. The congressional Republicans crafted a clause in the 14th Amendment to prevent the Southern states from challenging the federal debt that the states would need to pay, which prohibits challenging the validity of public debts authorized by law. However, the plain English words in the 14th Amendment authorize the federal government to incur debt only when authorized by law, not to pay all invoices or keep the American economy afloat, leading to a misinterpretation by big-government types and academics like Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe that does not align with history and Congress’s past decisions. The president cannot incur debt not authorized by law, choose which federal laws to enforce or ignore, or decide what the laws mean and how they should be applied. The courts must resolve the red light/green light dilemma, but it remains unlikely that Congress will achieve fiscal sanity soon.