March 30, 2011 08:54 PM UTC

Government Shutdown: "That's What the Tea Party is For!"

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: House Republicans are apparently refusing to discuss a measure that would prevent members of congress from taking a salary in the event of a government shutdown. Why? Well, because they need paychecks, as MSNBC’s First Read reports:

As freshman Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) told constituents last week: “I guarantee most of you, I have more debt than all of you. With six kids, I still pay off my student loans. I still pay my mortgage. I drive a used minivan. If you think I’m living high off the hog, I’ve got one paycheck. So I struggle to meet my bills right now.”

To recap, Republicans in the House believe they should continue to receive a salary if the government shuts down, in which case tens of thousands of government workers will not get paid because Congress didn’t do its job. Yup. That ought to sell well.

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We’re about 9 days away from the expiration of the current “Continuing Resolution” in Congress that funds the federal government. After several extensions, Republicans have been hinting that they won’t agree to another extension and will risk a government shutdown. Our friends at “The Fix” contemplate who wins or loses politically if there is indeed a shutdown, including some odd comments from the right:

Former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean said Tuesday he would be “quietly rooting for” a shutdown if he was still at the helm of the DNC. “I know who’s going to get blamed – we’ve been down this road before,” Dean added in a reference to the 1995 government shutdown.

Meanwhile South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R), a leader of the tea party movement in Congress, offered up a warning to his own party about the dangers of shying away from a shutdown in an interview with National Review; “I just hope that we are not so afraid of a government shutdown that we are not willing to make the right decisions,” he said. “That is what the tea party is for.”

Uh, what? Sen. Jim DeMint seems to be pretty eager to put the Tea Party in front of a shutdown bus, but as we’ve outlined before, the vast majority of voters don’t actually want the massive cuts that Tea Party-types have proposed. Perhaps its no coincidence, then, that despite the bluster Congressional Republicans have been quietly trying to seek a deal with Democrats on the budget rather than risk putting all their chips in the center of the table on a government shutdown — a move which was disastrous for Republicans when then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich led the way in 1995.