According to news reports, Team Obama and House Republicans are at least $50 billion apart in the budget negotiations for fiscal 2011. I’m willing to bet that Team Obama and Senate Democrats won’t agree to even $20 billion in spending cuts. And that’s a far cry from the GOP’s annualized $100 billion pledge-to-America mark and an even farther cry from the hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts that are necessary over the next five to 10 years. As I recall, the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission suggested more than $1 trillion in cuts to the domestic discretionary baseline over 10 years. I think the plan by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., would do the same. Surely the Tea Party advocates will push the GOP to stay on message and stay the course. That’s what November’s elections were all about. And if a satisfactory deal cannot be reached, one that keeps the GOP spending-cut pledge and includes a spending-limit rule with real teeth, then why not shut down the government?
Reading through various reports from the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, you get the sense that no great harm will come from a shutdown.
