During a press conference on Monday, President Obama rejected the notion of minting a platinum coin and the possibility of invoking the 14th Amendment, referring to these ideas as “magic tricks” and “loopholes”. He also explained the debt ceiling process, as well as the constitutional roles of the president, and the Congress in the process:
“And there are no magic tricks here. There are no loopholes. There are no easy outs. This is a matter of congress authorizes spending. They order me to spend. They tell me you need to fund our defense department at such an such a level. You need to send out social security checks. You need to make sure that you’re paying to care for our veterans. They lay all this out for me, because they have the spending power. And so I am required by law to go ahead and pay these bills. Separately, they also have to authorize a raising of the debt ceiling in order to make sure those bills are paid.
So what congress can’t do is tell me to spend X and then say we’re not going to give you the authority to go ahead and pay the bills.”
