Is the 14th Amendment a Good Use of the President's Authority?

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Matthews: Janet Yellen, she mends a trillion dollar coin. He says it sounds like the kind of thing that a guy who calls himself, Beowulf, in his spare time would come up with. The 14th Amendment argument makes sense, but usually we don't let presidents just say that they think stuff is unconstitutional and then ignore it, he says. Matthews: We could just get rid of this debt ceiling that we instituted around the First World War.

House Republicans are refusing to raise the US debt ceiling without huge concessions. Vox’s Dylan Matthews explains why we have a debt ceiling to begin with (and how President Biden could bypass it).

This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.

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