The “single scariest thing” is that most Americans discount the possible serious consequences of holding the debt ceiling hostage because they don’t understand what it is, Bloomberg Businessweek‘s Josh Green said Friday.
“If you polled my readers at Businessweek, people on Wall Street, people in banks, they are terrified when they hear John Boehner say something like: ‘Let’s move this thing to the debt ceiling. Let’s raise the drama and the risk and the stakes of what we’re fighting over, and that will be our way out of this crisis.’ Because all it does is make things worse,” Green said on Morning Joe.
House Speaker Boehner on Thursday said he would reject a “clean” Senate bill to fund the government, stripped of the defund Obamacare provision. The Republican speaker is expected make a series of demands in exchange for coming to a compromise on the budget and for any agreement over extending the country’s borrowing authority.
“I was wondering whether most Americans are starting to think: ‘Oh, well whatever happens in Washington doesn’t really make much difference to me. Even if they default on the debt, I don’t see the economic consequences,’” BBC World News’ Katty Kay said on the show.
The country is four days away from a possible government shutdown, which some GOP leaders threatened over the Obama administration’s landmark health care law. The Republican-led House last week passed a stop-gap spending bill that will fund the government through Dec. 15, but also stripped funding from the Obama administration’s health care law.
Watch more on Morning Joe.
Michele Richinick