Stephen Colbert on the debt ceiling: ‘This is a totally avoidable crisis’
“I hope everyone in America is using protection, because it’s very possible that we are all screwed,” said Stephen Colbert on Wednesday evening, as the clock ran down on another government shutdown. Even worse, the US government is rapidly approaching the debt ceiling; if Congress doesn’t raise it in the next several days, it could lead to what one economist called “financial Armageddon”.
“That’s bad news, and even worse timing,” the Late Show host said, “because America has already scheduled a plague Armageddon, a climate Armageddon and a democracy Armageddon. Can we pencil that in for next Wednesday? Maybe a lunch-mageddon?”
On Monday, the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, instructed Republicans to oppose raising the debt ceiling. “So this is a totally avoidable crisis,” said Colbert. “It would be like knowing there’s a life-saving medicine available during a pandemic and not taking it. Ooh, wait – maybe we should inject the budget with horse paste.”
Democrats could raise the debt ceiling without Republican support through a complicated process called reconciliation, but it wouldn’t be easy – they’d essentially have to pass four bills at once: one to fund the government, one to raise the debt ceiling, one for the Build Back Better bill and one for the $1tn bipartisan infrastructure bill. “That last one might be the most important,” said Colbert, “because if the first three don’t pass, we’ll all need bridges to live under.”
Trevor Noah
Trevor Noah also recapped the high-stakes game of chicken on Capitol
Hill this week in a new segment called Keeping Up with the Congressians.
Noah started with “Congress’s original drama queen”, the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, who on Monday instructed Senate Republicans to oppose a measure that would raise the debt ceiling. “Mitch McConnell, you are one catty bitch,” said Noah in character as a reality show host. “Mitch is bringing the best kind of drams to this fight: the pointless kind. I mean, does he have any reason to block this bill? No. Is he doing it anyway? Hell yeah. He’s sending back his steak at a restaurant even though it’s cooked perfectly.
“And let me tell you: Mitch does not care that the Democrats helped him raise the ceiling when he was the HBIC,” he added. “You think he’s losing sleep over this? No, no. My man is sleeping good using a pile of his own face skin as a pillow, trust me.”
Democrats are also hampered by the opposition of two centrist members of their own party, the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin and Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, who have opposed the price tag of Biden’s agenda as too high, but not publicly outlined what they would be comfortable spending.
“Joe is my kind of centrist, as in: he wants to be the center of attention,” Noah said. “He reminds me of that one friend at brunch who hates everything on the menu but can’t figure out what he likes.”
Samantha Bee
On Full Frontal, Samantha Bee discussed rampant misinformation on TikTok. The video-sharing app has 700 million monthly users globally, and “while it’s easy to think it’s just dance challenges and dorks brutally destroying their bodies on milk crates”, she said, “TikTok has become a huge source of medical misinformation, conspiracy theories and lies.”
TikTok explicitly prohibits misinformation about Covid-19, but “unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped videos from spreading faster than the disease that makes people listen to Joe Rogan,” Bee continued. This is thanks to TikTok’s machine-learning algorithm that supplies users with fresh, personalized content based on what they watch, skip, share and rewatch. “If a user watches one video with vaccine disinformation, the algorithm will keep feeding them more,” said Bee.
For example, a study by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue found that just 124 TikTok videos spreading vaccine misinformation were viewed over 20m times, with 340,000 shares. The spread of misinformation on TikTok is especially concerning because a majority of the app’s users are young people, “and even though they’re less likely to fall for the latest phishing scam that promised a lifetime of printer ink”, said Bee, a survey found that adults under 25 have the highest probability of believing a false claim about Covid.
“Look, there aren’t enough hours in the day to moderate every single post,” Bee concluded, “but if your algorithm is putting people in danger, you need to fix that fucking algorithm.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers tore into Manchin and Sinema for not specifying what, exactly, they oppose in Biden’s agenda to pass the infrastructure bill and avoid a debt default crisis. “Name one thing in this bill you think is unpopular,” Meyers demanded.
“Paid family leave, childcare tax credits, dental benefits for Medicare – you think people like shelling out for dental care?” he continued. “So on top of spending an hour strapped to a chair watching old episodes of Maury on a TV suspended from the ceiling while a hygienist peels back your gums with an ice pick floss-shaming you in a Russian accent, you have to beg your insurance company to cover it?
“There’s so much emphasis on the topline price tag, as if that matters to anyone,” he added on their discomfort with the price tag as too high. “First of all, it will be paid for by taxing the rich. But more importantly, instead of complaining about an abstract number that doesn’t mean anything to anyone, why don’t you name one actual thing in this bill you don’t like and would cut, something that Manchin and Sinema have refused to do.”