GOP’s shutdown fever: Why another debacle may be coming

If Obamacare's worst news is behind it, the right may have fewer incentives to play nice on the budget. Here's why

BRIAN BEUTLER

In the brief window between the end of the government shutdown six weeks ago, and the news tsunami that drowned it out when the media realized how bad Healthcare.gov was, the conventional wisdom held that the GOP would resist the temptations of brinkmanship in the new year and extend funding for the government without any drama.

Part of the conventional wisdom was rooted in political math — the shutdown was bad, there’s no way they’d do it again, months closer to the midterms. Part of it was regression to the mean bias. Part of it was that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said so: “There’s no education in the second kick of a mule. The first kick of the mule was in 1995; the second one was the last 16 days. A government shutdown is off the table. We’re not going to do it … We’re not going to do this again in connection with the debt ceiling or with a government shutdown.”

Then as Affordable Care Act woes mounted, the conventional wisdom hardened. Republicans weren’t going to surrender the gift of the Obama administration’s blundering rollout of the Affordable Care Act by shutting down the government.

All reasonable inferences. And now, the offices of Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., are baiting reporters with the possibility that the two chairs of the House and Senate Budget Committees will reach an agreement to pay down a few years of sequestration with a mix of other modest spending cuts and non-tax revenues spread out over many years. All that would be left to do then is pass some appropriations before Jan. 15 and we’d be in the clear.

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http://www.salon.com/2013/12/05/gops_shutdown_fever_why_another_debacle_may_be_coming/