What does Section 4 of the 14th Amendment mean?

""14th amendment, Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void."

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Is it debatable? Are the Republicans blowing smoke about not increasing the debt limit unless they get the spending cuts they want? Is it constitutional? If they can ignore this Amendment, what other Amendments or laws can they ignore? Can we simply say that the Republicans have been rebelling against the United States for the last 10 years and that all debts and obligations during that time are illegal and void??

I thought they were obsessed with the Constitution.

The Repubs are obsessed with the Constitution when it benefits their latest scheme. They didn't seen so obsessed with the Constitution when Bush did everything he could to ruin this country and shred the constitution to bits.

it would seem that they are not willing to "authorize by law" any more debt


I don't see how this amendment forces them to authorize more.

If you haven't borrowed it yet, then it isn't debt. The present debt limit is about what has already been borrowed, is my understanding?

but there is nothing that forces them to increase the limit


Your OP seems to suggest that the constitution will force them to authorize more debt, I don't read it that way. To me it seems that the clause you posted only deals with the existing debt, not any future debt.

Not future debt. Is it not?

we have a debt limit of ~14 trillion dollars



we have not reached that limit yet

if we raise the limit to 15 trillion then there is one trillion of future debt that we could borrow but as yet have not




so the limit must be on future debt, mustn't it?

is my understanding. If we don't agree to raise the limit, we are defaulting. The government, by borrowing from pension funds, is preventing default on present debt, not future debt.

http://www.moneycrashers.com/raising-national-federal-debt-ceiling-definition/


^snip^


Simply put, the debt ceiling is a cap on the amount of money that the U.S. government is allowed to owe. It includes both public and private debt.








The amount we are allowed to owe, not the amount we already owe

I don't see the distinction? We owe this now, not next year, is my understanding from what I have gleaned from various comments from different Senators?

on existing debt, Congress can either cut the budget by the amount required to continue debt service without raising the ceiling, or raise the ceiling. There is simply no way to reduce the current expenditures by the required amount. The ceiling has to be raised.

US defaulting on its debts.

interest payments on the debt. Interest payments are a small fraction of tax revenue, so these can continue indefinitely even if the debt ceiling is not raised for decades.

The government would have to immediately stop or end other government programs to avoid borrowing more, but it would not have to stop making interest payments.

This blog post has a few relevant thoughts: http://justenrichment.com/2011/05/04/section-four-of-the-fourteenth-amendment-and-the-national-debt/