This is a Republican shutdown, plain and simple

James Fallows lists “The Two Basic Facts That Should Be in Every Shutdown Story”:

1. If the House of Representatives voted on a “clean” budget bill — one that opened up the closed federal offices but did not attempt to defund the Obama health care program — that bill would pass, and the shutdown would be over. Nearly all Democrats would vote for it, as would enough Republicans to end the shutdown and its related damage. (And of course it has already passed the Senate, repeatedly, and would be signed by the president.) For illustrations of the wanton damage, see here and here.
   
   
2. So far House Speaker John Boehner has refused to let this vote occur. His Tea Party contingent knows how the vote would go and therefore does not want it to happen; and such is Boehner’s fear of them, and fear for his job as Speaker, that he will not let it take place.

Therefore, the shutdown is a strictly Republican baby. If the bill that John Boehner now has stuffed in his back pocket were to go up for a vote, it would pass and that would be that. The shutdown continues because Boehner refuses to end it.

Period. End of story.

[photo by Gage Skidmore]