OPINION:
“Lawsuit: Yellen should ignore ‘unconstitutional’ debt limit” (Web, May 8) refers to Harvard Law School Prof. Laurence Tribe’s view that the debt limit is unconstitutional. But the professor’s reasoning wouldn’t pass muster with a first-year law student.
The debt limit, Tribe says, is unconstitutional because it “is not a bargaining tool for Congress to employ.” This is absurd, as both Congress and the president are using the debt limit as a bargaining tool and they’ve both done so for decades.
Tribe also claims the limit is unconstitutional because it breaches a contract with the bondholders whose payments are delayed or extinguished by the debt limit. This is even more absurd. The U.S. has had a debt limit since 1917. Every bondholder knows the debt limit is established by Congress and assumes the risk the limit will not be high enough to authorize payment on his bond. The bondholder knows what he’s buying into and may have priced the bond to cover his risk.
There’s nothing unconstitutional, or even unfair, in holding the bondholder to the bargain he made.
JIM DUEHOLM
Washington, D.C.
