re: #60 dog philosopher

so what’s to stop the teabags from keeping the government closed indefinitely? fox new is already declaring it a “slimdown”

i’m beginning to think that they’ll take care of the debt ceiling since that can’t be ignored, and then settle into a permanent shutdown that they will tout as “proving” that the federal government is useless

It’s like I said earlier, the GOP leadership (what there is of it) has already made clear that they consider the debt ceiling their ace in the hole, the leverage that will make President Obama agree to a deal. If they flinch and raise the ceiling, even temporarily, then that’s pretty much it. Continuing the shutdown after that would just be out of pure spite, which would deep six their chances next year.

Besides, I don’t imagine that federal workers would take too many missed paychecks before they staged a walk-out. These nutters forget that those marked “essential” are going without paychecks, even if they’re still on the job.