The newest government shutdown game is figuring/when out when it will all end. Get your chips ready now. NBC’s Chuck Todd guesses that if it doesn’t end today, it may not end until the debt-ceiling crisis sell-by date of 10/17. As I wrote today, I think this ploy makes default even more likely. Some Democrats are now wondering whether the anti-GOP reaction is sufficiently bad that they should refuse any deal that doesn’t include a debt ceiling.
And how bad is the reaction? To the closings? To the furloughs? To the senseless suicide caucus overreach? Barack Obama gets up early to castigate the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party and to report that the phones at the exchange lines are ringing like they’re giving away — I don’t know — affordable health insurance.
Meanwhile, Politico is reporting that while John Boehner took the House floor to call for an end to subsidies on government staffers’ health care, he’d been secretly working with Democrats to keep the subsidies in place. Can anyone say RINO squish? I bet Ted Cruz can.
And the New York Daily News gives us a cover for the (scatological) ages, in a takeoff of House of Cards, with John Boehner in the starring role.
