NPR reports, “Former President Bill Clinton said if faced with default, he would single-handedly raise the debt ceiling using the 14th Amendment and he’d do it ‘without hesitation, and force the courts to stop me.’”

The relevant part of the 14th Amendment (1868) — the middle of the three Civil War-era amendments written (principally) to secure the rights of the freedmen — says, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law…shall not be questioned.” As the recent debates in Washington have shown, no one is questioning it. It then reads, “But neither the United States nor any State” shall pay the Confederacy’s debts, nor pay compensation for anyone’s slaves having escaped or having been emancipated. Finally, in the next section, it reads, “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”