Using his non-existent power to do so under the 14th Amendment. Their press conference is tomorrow morning at 11 am, for those interested.

How dumb of an idea is this? Not only has the White House rejected it as unconstitutional, but very liberal Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) has said doing so would cause a “great crisis” in the country.

Let’s get this out of the way now:

No, the president doesn’t have the power to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling. Under the Constitution, only Congress has the power to issue new debt.

The 14th Amendment simply says we can’t refuse to recognize debt we’ve taken on already. We have to service existing debt — not issue new debt. There’s a big difference there.

We have the money to pay existing debt. We don’t have the money to pay existing debt and fund other government programs, but the Constitution doesn’t care about that. It only requires service on existing debt. The end.

Only someone who fails to understand the 14th Amendment, or simply doesn’t care, would argue that it authorizes the president to issue new debt unilaterally — which is what a debt ceiling increase does.