For most Americans, the debt ceiling is something abstract and technical that officials in Washington fight about. They have a hard time understanding the impact that this issue could have on their daily lives, and they do not appear to be listening to the warnings that policy experts are issuing with increasing urgency. The following contradictory and ambiguous poll findings illustrate the problem.
Many economists and budget experts predict that a default would trigger significant interest rate increases, a fall in the stock market, instability throughout the financial system, and the weakening of the dollar’s leading role in the global economy. Still the people don’t believe them, at least not yet. When a recent Economist/YouGov survey asked voters whether a failure to raise the debt ceiling followed by a default on the national debt would be a crisis, only 37% answered in the affirmative. Forty percent thought it would be a major problem but not a crisis, and the rest regarded this prospect as at most a minor problem. CONTINUED
William A. Galston, Brookings Institution
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