What is Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment?

0:06[MUSIC] Section 4 of the 14th Amendment was about repudiating or rejecting the Confederate war debt. In other words, the Confederacy took a lot of loans from banks from other countries in order to finance their insurrection, the rebellion. Well, the national government, the union who won the war, didn't want to have to pay that debt, nor should they? It was illegitimate debt obtained for an illegitimate purpose.

0:31What Section 4 of the 14th Amendment says is that the Confederate war debt is invalid and is repudiated. It says that the war debt of the union or just the public debt authorized by law of the United States of the union. Shall not be questioned. It says, the validity of the public debt of the United States as authorized by law shall not be questioned. It repudiates the war debt of the Confederacy while saying that the United States debt shall not be questioned. Today, this clause is potentially implicated in debates over the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is a limit to how much the United States can borrow. Under Article I Section 8, Clause 2, the United States Congress has the power to authorize the borrowing of money on the credit of the United States. The United States Congress has authorized the borrowing of money to finance the operations of the national government,

1:32to finance national programs up to a limit called the debt limit. The question then arises. What happens when we reach the debt limit and we are unable to pay down existing debt? The question becomes, is that questioning the validity of the debt within the meaning of Section 4, such that the debt ceiling is somehow invalid? [MUSIC]