About the federal debt time bomb: Reframing the issue

The NYT published an opinion by well-known constitutional scholar, Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe. The opinion opines:

Why I Changed My Mind on the Debt Limit

Over the years, Congress has raised the debt ceiling scores of times, most recently two years ago, when it set the cap at $31.4 trillion. We hit that amount on Jan. 19 and are being told that the “extraordinary measures” Treasury has available to get around it are about to run out. When that happens, all hell will break loose.

The question isn’t whether the president can tear up the debt limit statute to ensure that the Treasury Department can continue paying bills submitted by veterans’ hospitals or military contractors or even pension funds that purchased government bonds.

The question isn’t whether the president can in effect become a one-person Supreme Court, striking down laws passed by Congress.

The right question is whether Congress — after passing the spending bills that created these debts in the first place — can invoke an arbitrary dollar limit to force the president and his administration to do its bidding.

There is only one right answer to that question, and it is no.

And there is only one person with the power to give Congress that answer: the president of the United States. As a practical matter, what that means is this: Mr. Biden must tell Congress in no uncertain terms — and as soon as possible, before it’s too late to avert a financial crisis — that the United States will pay all its bills as they come due, even if the Treasury Department must borrow more than Congress has said it can. 

The president should remind Congress and the nation, “I’m bound by my oath to preserve and protect the Constitution to prevent the country from defaulting on its debts for the first time in our entire history.” Above all, the president should say with clarity, “My duty faithfully to execute the laws extends to all the spending laws Congress has enacted, laws that bind whoever sits in this office — laws that Congress enacted without worrying about the statute capping the amount we can borrow.”

That analysis feels right to me. Why? Because the 14th A., Sec. 4 reads in relevant part as follows: The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. Clearly, Congress does not have the power to force the US into default.

Unless the Republicans have subverted the Constitution, and maybe they have, the Constitution stands above the laws that Congress passes. In other words, Congress can pass laws that are unconstitutional and the Supreme Court is supposed to fix that. But here, Congress passed spending laws that are not being challenged as unconstitutional by Republicans. Instead the radical right authoritarians say they are willing to ignore spending laws and allow a default in clear violation of the 14th A., Sec. 4. 

Q: Does Tribe get the analysis right here, or is there some sneaky trick or flaw in the logic and/or language of the Constitution?