You can’t turn on the news these days and not hear something about the battle in Washington, D.C. over the national debt crisis. The U.S. Congress and President Joe Biden’s administration can’t seem to agree on whether to raise the debt limit so that America might pay its already incurred bills or do nothing and allow the country to go into default that would send the global economy into a tailspin.
Simply put, Biden needs Congress to raise the debt ceiling so that government bills that already have been accumulated can be paid. As a kitchen table matter, we need to transfer funds from the line of credit we have on the house into the household account from which we pay our monthly bills. Such a move puts us further in debt, but without it our household will crumble.
Raising the debt limit is a necessity.
But Republicans, who control the U.S. House of Representatives, are refusing to raise the debt limit until the Biden administration makes drastic cuts to social safety net programs like SNAP (food stamps), TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families), and perhaps even Medicare, which provides healthcare for the working poor.
Meanwhile, tens of billions have been spent in government bailouts for recently failed banks who took on too much risk trying to fatten their own coffers. Looming over all this income inequality is a June 1 deadline, after which the U.S. economy is likely to explode if the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling isn’t raised, according to the U.S. Treasury Department and other economic experts.
This leaves President Biden with few choices, one of which, however, is the invocation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It’s this amendment that brings America screeching back to confront its greatest sin. It always comes down to slavery, doesn’t it?
The 13th Amendment made slavery illegal in the United States, but it was the 14th Amendment that guaranteed citizenship to all persons “born or naturalized” in the United State, i.e., formerly enslaved Black people. As a sidenote, the 14th Amendment also made it illegal for Congress to ever nullify U.S. indebtedness:
“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … including services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion shall not be questioned,” the language of the amendment reads.
It was designed to prevent southern states from avoiding the Union-accumulated war debt once they were readmitted into Congress. Lawmakers of the day didn’t want the former Confederate states to ever invalidate the costs incurred to free the enslaved.
Biden, however, could invoke the amendment to circumvent recalcitrant Republican efforts to hold the president over an economic barrel. Essentially, the amendment says no authorized debt of the U.S. government can be ignored.
So, this is what it comes down to concerning the present debt crisis: President Biden can negotiate with Republicans over raising the debt limit, and likely slash social safety net programs that benefit many Black people and poor people, or he can rely on a constitutional amendment that was primarily aimed at enfranchising the ancestors of Black people.
It’s a place where Biden has been before – dependent on the kindness of Black folk.
After several unsuccessful bids for president, it was Biden who was finally brought into the Oval Office by America’s first legitimate Black President, Barack Obama. Then, in Biden’s 2020 campaign for office, it was Black primary voters in South Carolina (specifically Black women) who lifted Biden’s dismal campaign from the ashes and catapulted him to the Democratic nomination.
And now with the debt crisis, Biden finds himself once again with the possibility of seeking redemption from Black people. So much for Bill Clinton being the first white man to be the first Black president. America just can’t escape it’s greatest sin.
