“After the Civil War, political leaders in the defeated South announced their intention of resuming their seats in Congress and of using their power…to compel the federal government either to pay off all debts of the Confederacy or to default on the national debt which had been borrowed to finance the Union war effort…For this reason, [Reconstruction Republicans] wrote into our fundamental law an absolute prohibition against defaulting on the national debt. Its language establishes a complete firewall against the misuse of governmental power by one political faction to get its way by wrecking the public credit.“
As congressional Republicans try to bluff their way through another round of hostage-taking with the American economy, this time vis a vis the debt limit, Garrett Epps reminds us that the debt limit idea is actually unconstitutional, by way of the 14th Amendment (already not the GOP’s favorite accomplishment.) “This requirement is absolute. It is contained in Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment, which directs, in no uncertain terms, that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law…shall not be questioned.“