Playbook: Ilhan Omar leads the 14th Amendment charge
SWEET 14TH — Progressives in Congress continue to speak out with serious warnings to the White House about the direction of budget negotiations with House Republicans. If you haven’t listened already, you can hear our podcast conversation with Rep. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-N.Y.), who warned President JOE BIDEN not to sell out the left on policy, to keep the 14th Amendment as a viable option, and to remember that Speaker KEVIN McCARTHY doesn’t have enough votes to pass a bill that could also pass the Senate.
The progressive pressure continues into the weekend. Last night, 66 Democrats in the House signed a letter to Biden advising the president to invoke the 14th Amendment — which holds that the “validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned” — rather than “negotiating on devastating budget cuts, additional work requirements for essential food and economic support, and fast-tracking fossil fuel projects.”
At the very least they want Biden to keep the threat as a backup plan: “we would choose a solution invoking the 14th Amendment of the Constitution over a bad deal.”
Biden aides are throwing a lot of cold water on the idea, Adam Cancryn reports, telling key figures in the progressive sphere that invoking the amendment is not “a viable means of circumventing debt ceiling negotiations” and would be “risky and destabilizing.”
“They have not ruled it out,” one adviser to the White House told Adam. “But it is not currently part of the plan.”
Undeterred, House progressives are pushing the issue hard. We talked to Rep. ILHAN OMAR (D-Minn.), the deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, as she and her colleagues were coordinating the release of the letter this week.
— Omar on why using the 14th Amendment makes sense: “A lot of us are really worried that the Republicans are creating this crisis and do not mind destroying our economy and the global economy if it makes the president look bad, as [DONALD] TRUMP said at that CNN interview. And I do believe that the president should be thinking about and considering utilizing the 14th Amendment to take some of that leverage away from the Republicans.”
— On the potential pitfalls: “The Supreme Court might decide that the president fulfilling his oath might have limitations in regards to certain parts of addressing the debt, and that might not be as wide enough to capture a full authority. And then the other concern is how the markets would react to it.
“But I think those are bridges that we can cross when we get to [them]. But he does have the authority within the 14th Amendment, and we do think that he should be thinking about it, preparing for it and giving some sort of hope to the American people and the global community about the financial situation of our country and the global economy. But also really saying to the Republicans: If you want to hold our economy hostage, we have a plan to take you down.”