Though there are reports that an agreement is near, a lot could go wrong if congressional Republicans and the White House are unable to work out a deal to raise the debt ceiling by late next week. At some point in the next few weeks, checks from the federal government would stop going out since the country wouldn’t be able to pay its bills. Interest rates would rise, the stock market would fall, and the country would likely enter a recession potentially resulting in millions of job losses.
But do most Americans know this? And who would they blame for the economic calamity that would ensue?
The answer to the first question is easy: Most Americans don’t seem to view the debt ceiling threat as that big of a deal, or they don’t seem to view a potential default on debt as a crisis. The second question is more complicated and will depend on just how badly the economy craters if a deal isn’t reached in the next week.
The chaos could start as early as June: A little more than a week remains until we hit the June 5 “X-date,” when the Treasury Department has said the US would begin to be unable to pay its debts and could have to prioritize which bills go unpaid. The debt ceiling is the legal limit on how much the US can borrow in order to pay for a large portion of government spending. The US, in fact, hit the debt ceiling in January; The Treasury is using “extraordinary measures” to keep the government afloat, but those will soon be exhausted as well.
Congressional Republicans and the White House remain in negotiations. Though members of Congress have already left the capital for their Memorial Day weekend break, recent reporting suggests that a deal might be in sight — but the most conservative members of the House don’t seem to like some of the details. (House Democrats, for their part, also don’t seem thrilled.)
Most public polling shows a core challenge for Biden and the Democrats: The majority of Americans don’t seem to understand the…
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