6 facts about the 14th Amendment “The validity of the public
debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be
questioned,” reads the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The upcoming fight to raise the national debt ceiling has again
pushed the clause into the spotlight. Here is some important
recent history on the issue: 1. In July 2011, former President
Bill Clinton said he would use the 14th Amendment to raise the
national debt ceiling “without hesitation, and force the courts
to stop me” if a default was in sight. It’s “necessary to pay
for appropriations already made, so you can’t say, ‘Well, we won
the last election and we didn’t vote for some of that stuff, so
we’re going to throw the whole country’s credit into
arrears.’”Continue Reading 2. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi
has put her support behind unilaterial presidential action on
the debt ceiling by using the 14th. “I would just go do it. But
the Congress has incurred much of this debt. And so what are you
saying, we incurred it b