A U.S. debt default is no joke. Federal employees and military personnel wouldn’t be paid, Social Security checks would be late, and up to 8 million workers could lose their jobs. But a crisis-weary American public isn’t paying much attention.
NBC News describes (here) the recent drumbeat of negative news:
“A mass shooting in Allen, Texas, and another in Cleveland, Texas. The first-ever indictment of a former president, followed by a sex abuse verdict, followed by the indictment of a sitting congressman. Fighter jets shooting down UFOs over North America. War in Ukraine. Threats of war in Asia. A flood of migrants crossing the southern border. Actual floods in California.”
(Add to this another mass shooting today in Farmington, New Mexico.)
Focus groups indicate a lot of people don’t believe Congress is this irresponsible. (It probably is.) Wall Street is blowing it off, and investors are still buying Treasury bonds. News media are giving the issue relatively little coverage.
The complacency could change overnight, of course, if Granny starts saying, “Where’s my Social Security check?” and the dog has to go hungry because she’s eating its food.
But for now, the public seems gripped by malaise. They’ve been through a lot, and they’re tired. Plus, “Because default was avoided the last two times, there seems to be an assumption from a lot of people and the markets that it will be avoided again,” a former Obama official said, who added, “That is a deeply naive view in my opinion.”
It’s naive in my opinion, too. House Republicans passed a debt ceiling bill roughly analogous to Lee demanding Grant’s surrender at Appomattox. McCarthy, not Biden, has to back down; but he can’t, or he loses his Speaker position. As I see it, there’s no way this doesn’t go to the very brink, and quite possibly over it.
Although there’s a deer-in-headlights aspect to this, I suspect most people can’t get out of the way, so they’re just hoping the car swerves and doesn’t hit them. Trouble is, there’s a 6-year-old driver behind the wheel.