Democratic senators urge Biden to use 14th Amendment to avoid debt
default
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[May 19, 2023]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A group of U.S. Senate Democrats called on
President Joe Biden to prepare to invoke the U.S. Constitution's 14th
Amendment to avoid a debt default if negotiations with Republicans fail,
according to a letter released on Thursday.
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U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, joined by
Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Edward Markey (D-MA), John Fetterman
(D-PA), and Peter Welch (D-VT), speaks at a press conference on Capitol
Hill about 11 Senate Democrats who sent a letter to President Joe Biden
urging him to invoke the 14th Amendment to avoid a catastrophic debt
default, in Washington, U.S., May 18, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein |
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Led
by independent Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with the Democrats,
the 11 lawmakers said while they appreciated Biden's efforts to
find a bipartisan deal to lift the debt ceiling, Republicans in
Congress were "not acting in good faith."
“We write to urgently request that you prepare to exercise your
authority under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which
clearly states: ‘the validity of the public debt of the United
States…shall not be questioned,'" they wrote Biden, a fellow
Democrat.
"Using this authority would allow the United States to continue
to pay its bills on-time, without delay, preventing a global
catastrophe," they said.
Biden is continuing negotiations with House of Representatives
Speaker Kevin McCarthy during his trip to the G7 Summit in Japan
this week, ahead of the June 1 date when the U.S. Treasury has
said the government could start running out of funds if the debt
ceiling is not lifted.
The periodic lifting of the federal government's borrowing limit
allows the government to pay for spending Congress has already
authorized.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward, Paul and Susan Heavey; Editing by
Doina Chiacu and Leslie Adler)
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