Insofar as cable news has become a tennis match of doomsday scenarios hit back and forth between the right and left, Lawrence O’Donnell slammed the ball into a little-used corner of the other side’s court. Now on the horizon of things the federal government has to panic over, according to O’Donnell, is the possibility of a federal government shutdown, which could happen if Republicans don’t agree on a budget.
It has happened before, O’Donnell explains, and it means that most federal agencies and programs completely grind to a halt– they have no money to continue. Institutional memory helps keep the possibility at bay, but, O’Donnell fears, “you have all these new people in there willing to go ahead and proceed with a government shutdown” who don’t remember when Newt Gingrich‘s House allowed it to happen.
To discuss the issue, O’Donnell invited writer Margaret Carlson on the program, who remembered the last government shutdown all too well. While she was concerned that the “
freshmen have no memory” and “are willing to go for broke,” She also noted that the Republican leadership was unlikely to be persuaded by their influence. “[Speaker]
John Boehner is no Newt Gingrich,” she noted, “He’s not a revolutionary.” Either wait, O’Donnell concluded that the odds of a government shutdown being a good thing for Republicans were slim to none: “You get one army wife on the local TV station who doesn’t have the pay check that week and Republicans are in big trouble.”
The segment via MSNBC below: