Debt Ceiling Politics on the Ohio River

Interviews in Parkersburg, West Virginia, the home of the Bureau of Public Debt (h/t Mark Thoma):

The math nearly dictates that any solution would require deep cuts to the two giant entitlement programs for the elderly, Medicare and Social Security. That would sock Parkersburg. City officials say that a quarter of their economy is based on health care. The share of the town’s population age 65 or older is nearly 50 percent higher than the national average. A sudden slowdown in Medicare or Social Security payments “could have a huge impact” on the city, warns Ann Conageski, the city’s development director. “You’d see things coming to a halt.” Federal furloughs or mass layoffs could drain even more money from the local economy and the city’s tax base, starting with the salaries earned by the approximately 2,000 people who work at the Bureau of Public Debt (the government wouldn’t be borrowing, after all).
Parkersburg spreads thin along the Ohio, where the river makes an abrupt left-hand turn. Like many towns up and downstream, it has struggled for decades to replace lost factory jobs. The economy now runs largely on small businesses; health care for the large elderly population; and local, state, and federal government. In March, area unemployment was 9.6 percent, according to the Labor Department; that’s a drop of 1 percentage point from the previous month but is still above the national average. Realtors and loan officers say that the housing market—although it didn’t bubble as high as other parts of the country or crash as far in the recession—may not have hit bottom yet.
Some signs do point to gradual improvement. Several area car dealerships are expanding. Thanks in part to autos, local advertising spending is rising at Parkersburg’s three television stations, two of them network affiliates, said Roger Sheppard, the vice president and general manager of WTAP-TV. A few developers, city officials say, are moving ahead with new construction, especially of stores that sell things for $1 or less. DuPont, which operates a plant in town, is looking for engineers.