A lawsuit filed a day before a high stakes meeting between President Biden and congressional leaders claims the debt limit set by Congress is unconstitutional when applied to spending already authorized by lawmakers.
The legal action, filed in Federal Court in Boston by a union of government employees, targets Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Biden to try to stop them from complying with the law that limits the government’s total debt.
The suit, filed by the National Association of Government Employees, says that if Yellen abides by the debt limit once it becomes binding, possibly next month, she would have to choose which federal obligations to actually pay.
But under the Constitution, the lawsuit argues, the president and Treasury secretary have no authority to decide which payments to make because the Constitution grants spending power to Congress. Doing so, it contends, would violate the Constitution’s separation of powers.
“Nothing in the Constitution or any judicial decision interpreting the Constitution,” the lawsuit states, “allows Congress to leave unchecked discretion to the President to exercise the spending power vested in the legislative branch by canceling, suspending, or refusing to carry out spending already approved by Congress.”
White House and Treasury Department spokespeople declined to comment on the lawsuit Monday.
“This litigation is both an effort to protect our members from illegal furloughs and to correct an unconstitutional statute that frequently creates uncertainty and anxiety for millions of Americans,” said NAGE National President David J. Holway. “The Debt Ceiling has become a political football for certain members of Congress. If Congress will not raise the Debt Limit as it has nearly 80 times before without condition, it leaves no constitutional choice for the President.”
The debt ceiling was raised three times under former President Donald Trump without cuts, via bipartisan votes in 2017, 2018 and 2019, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, though the 2019 bill included $77 billion in “offsets.”
House Republicans, under Speaker Kevin McCarthy, just passed a bill to raise the debt limit that also includes $4.8 trillion in spending cuts over the next 10 years.
On Tuesday, Biden will meet with the top Republicans and Democrats in Congress to seek a potential breakthrough.
Yellen has said that come June 1, there would not be enough cash on hand to meet all of the nation’s obligations. “Financial and economic chaos would ensue,” she said over the weekend.
The NAGE represents about 75,000 government employees who it says are at risk of being laid off or losing pay and benefits should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling. The nation actually hit the debt limit, currently $31.4 trillion, in January. But Yellen has since used various accounting measures to avoid breaching it.