After the Civil War, Southerners objected strenuously to the fact that Union debts were repaid, while Confederate debts were repudiated. Fear that Congress might lack the votes to pay interest on the debt or repay principal, due to Southern obstinacy, led to the addition of an obscure clause to the Fourteenth Amendment preventing this from happening. It states: “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
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When Republicans came very, very close to defaulting on the debt 10 years ago, a number of legal scholars argued that the Fourteenth Amendment and the president’s inherent constitutional authority could be used by President Obama to simply ignore the debt limit and sell whatever bonds were necessary to finance the spending Congress had already authorized. These included Garret Epps of the University of Baltimore, Michael Abramowicz of George Washington University, Eric Posner of the University of Chicago and Adrian Vermeule of Harvard, Neil Buchanan of the University of Florida and Michael Dorf of Cornell, Jacob Charles of Duke University, and numerous others. Former President Bill Clinton agreed.