No cool heads in US debt haystack
“Until you recognise that the ANC is unfixable you can’t fix the country’s problems.” It’s Republicans vs Democrats vs the people of the US, if debt deal wrangling is anything to go by
To Washington, DC, where a deal between Republicans and Democrats on raising the US debt ceiling might be agreed by both houses of congress this week.
Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy is confident he can get enough votes to push the deal over the line despite hardliners such as Chip Roy of the Republican Freedom Caucus saying they intend to stop it a block from the old Chip.
The battle lines are as expected. Republicans rant that the Joe Biden administration is out of control and leading the Land of the Free to penury (this from the party that thinks the rich should pay less tax while ordinary citizens battle to afford medical care. And often food).
It’s not as if the Democrats represent the impeccable voice of reason, however. Roll up Bernie Sanders, who apparently reckons the minimum wage should be $17 an hour entirely attainable if the country gives up, say, the many billions it spends on defence each year.
The debt ceiling sideshow of the ongoing US political circus would be no more than a divertissement for the rest of us were it not for the fact that a default could send global markets into a tailspin.
We the circusgoers can hardly be blamed, then, for being a bit nervous. The debt ceiling has been raised 78 times since 1960 to $31.4trillion today but cool heads are, like dollars, increasingly rare.
In case you’re wondering why the matter wasn’t dealt with on Monday already, it was Memorial Day in the US, with politicians attending ceremonies to honour the country’s war dead.
As the old joke goes, a grasp of irony is not one of the things that made the US great.