Government Shutdown? 'Bring It On'

Matthew Yglesias: A brief one gives us a chance to fix this mess now
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 24, 2013 12:33 PM CDT
Government Shutdown? 'Bring It On'
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas leaves the floor of the Senate on Monday.   (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

We're less than a week away from a possible government shutdown, but it probably won't come to pass, writes Matthew Yglesias at Slate. The safe money right now says that Ted Cruz won't be able to fend off the inevitable result: Republicans will agree to yet another last-minute resolution that keeps the government running for another month or two and includes funding for ObamaCare. Hence no shutdown, which has to be good news for everyone, right? Nope, writes Yglesias: "I’m rooting for the opposite, and you should be, too. A little government shutdown isn’t the worst thing in the world, and it’s much better to have this fight now rather than entertain months of herky-jerky crisis."

By "this fight," Yglesias is including the looming deadline to raise the debt ceiling. A shutdown is small potatoes in comparison to the political and financial crises that would result from a default, or even the threat of one. John Boehner wants to bargain for concessions with President Obama, and Obama refuses. Given the public disapproval of the "shutdown-or-defund strategy," Yglesias thinks that the GOP would cave quickly during a shutdown on both the continuing resolution and the debt ceiling. We'd be safe through the next election, after which lawmakers could revisit everything—perhaps even the very existence of a debt ceiling. "By contrast, if we avoid a shutdown, we’ll have simply teed ourselves up for another crisis a few weeks later," he writes. "Bring on the shutdown." Click for Yglesias' full column. (More government shutdown stories.)

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