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278The 2011 Debt Limit Impasse: Treasury’s Actions & The Counterfactual – What Might Have Happened if the National Debt Hit the Statutory LimitProfessor Stern points to the second sentence of the Public DebtClause 142 to show that only “debt” obligations fall within the scopeof “public debt” because “debt” and “obligations” are separate entitiesin the rest of the Clause. 143 Professor Tribe argues that the usageof “debt” in the original Constitution cannot refer to all statutoryobligations. 144 Moreover, a proposed floor amendment 145 would havereplaced “public debt” with “obligations,” but failed to be adopted.Therefore, the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment may have“deliberately decided to exclude ‘obligations’ from the Public DebtClause.” 146Third, it is unclear how a court would evaluate the Public Debt Clausetoday. When given the opportunity in 1989 and 1990, several federalappellate courts did not apply the Clause. With respect to the Court’sonly interpretation of the Public Debt Clause, Professor Abramowicznotes that “Perry was decided at the height of the constitutional crisisbetween the Roosevelt Administration and the Court over new Deallegislation,” 147 and “[i]n post-1937 cases, the Court backed awayfrom earlier activist stances limiting the government’s ability to crafteconomic policy.” 148142“But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligationincurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the lossor emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal andvoid.” U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 4.143Michael Stern, “Arrest Me. I Question the Validity of the Public Debt.” Point of Order, June2, 2011, http://www.pointoforder.com/2011/06/02/arrest-me-i-question-the-validity-of-thepublic-debt/.144Laurence Tribe, Guest Post on the Debt Ceiling by Laurence Tribe, Dorf on Law, July 16,2011, http://www.dorfonlaw.org/2011/07/guest-post-on-debt-ceiling-by-laurence.html.145See infra Appendix C. Senator Howard’s amendment is as follows: “The obligations of theUnited States, incurred in suppressing insurrection, or in defense of the Union, or for paymentof bounties or pensions incident thereto, shall remain inviolate.”146Stern, supra note 143. In response to this argument, Professor Jack Balkin points out thatSenator Howard’s wording appears narrower than the final version of the Public Debt Clausebecause it is limited to the obligations enumerated in the proposed amendment. Jack Balkin,More on the Original Meaning of Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment, Balkinization,July 2, 2011, http://balkin.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-on-original-meaning-of-section.html.147Id.148Id. at 15-16. However, it is debatable whether an application of the Public Debt Clause tothe debt limit debate would be an “activist interpretation.”