The world has moved on from debt ceiling gamesmanship – Roll Call

A New York Times/CBS News poll from late June 2011 found that voters considered the budget deficit and the national debt to be the second most serious problem facing the nation. Admittedly, that answer (7 percent) was dwarfed by those worried about economy and jobs (53 percent).

The 2011 debt ceiling fight illustrated how much politics back then was dominated by green-eyeshade concerns about the deficit. In poll after poll, voters were more concerned that raising the debt limit would increase federal spending (incorrect) than were rightly worried that a failure to act would send the nation into default.

These days, deficits have all but disappeared from the national conversation. The trillions blur on both Capitol Hill and in the minds of the voters after the unfunded Trump tax cuts and the massive spending necessary to cushion the economy at the height of the pandemic.

In August, Gallup asked voters in a poll to name the most important issue facing the country. Government spending and the national debt were mentioned by only 2 percent of those surveyed.

Where once the GOP was seen as the party of fiscal restraint, now neither party has an edge on the issue. An Associated Press/NORC survey in mid-July found that the Democrats and the Republicans were each judged by 27 percent voters as the most trusted to handle the budget deficit. Another 28 percent skeptically said neither.

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The world has moved on from debt ceiling gamesmanship - Roll Call