Across Nation, Budget Talks Stir Pessimism
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SAN FRANCISCO -- On Friday morning, President Obama insisted that he completely understood how the American people -- a phrase he mentioned more than two dozen times -- felt about the slow pace of negotiations over the debt ceiling.
"For the general public -- I've said this before, but I just want to reiterate -- this is not some abstract issue," the president said in a news conference at the White House, adding that he knew that the American people "expect more."
"They expect," he said, "that we actually try to solve this problem."
But, as Yoda once said, there is a profound difference between try and do. And a quick, informal selection of voices from across the country over the weekend found both pessimism and cynicism about the state of negotiations in Washington, resignation about the partisan jousting and more confusion than conniption about what exactly will happen if the president and his Republican opponents cannot make a deal to raise the debt ceiling by Aug. 2.
And neither side, they say, looks good.
"They're all boneheads," said Steve Ruzika, 55, an entrepreneur from Boca Raton, Fla., who added that while he is politically conservative, he is fed up with both ends of the political spectrum.
"This has been brewing for a long time," Mr. Ruzika said. "They should have solved it before now."
Indeed, the drama of whether the government will raise the debt ceiling (to the chagrin of some conservatives demanding tighter financial belts) or allow it to remain as is (to the horror of the administration and economists who predict financial ruin) seemed largely lost on a populace involved in more pressing -- and more pleasant -- summer distractions.
"I have no interest in it," said Stephanie Perone, an assistant at a financial services company in San Francisco, who was drinking wine with a friend during Friday's happy hour. "It's just the same thing over and over."
And while the spats between the president and the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia, may have electrified fans of inside-the-Beltway action, Ms. Perone said there were few, if any, audience members around her office's water cooler. "I think that they're talking more about the Casey Anthony trial," she said.
Mr. Obama acknowledged as much on Friday, saying, "The American people are not interested in the reality TV aspects of who said what and did somebody's feelings get hurt."
First Published July 18, 2011 12:00 am
