Confusion over US debt deal down to an overly balanced media

BY THE time you read this, America’s two big political parties may have done a deal on the economy.

Or they may have failed to do such a deal, in which case the next 24 hours will be at least fraught, and at worst — for US citizens — terrifying. One of the immediate consequences would be that the military, one of the big draws on federal as opposed to state funds, would not be paid. Nor would other federal employees.

The last week has been largely about positions, not solutions. The relatively new and hitherto little-known Speaker of the House of Representatives, John A Boehner, became a household name as he refused to play ball with Barack Obama’s administration. Boehner’s proposal took the form of a bill that would raise the nation’s debt ceiling and cut spending. From where the Democrats stood, that would be a dire option. Cutting spending means hitting Medicare and Medicaid, the health systems supporting an aging and increasingly impoverished population, together with diminishing spend on almost every other societal support system, particularly education.