Still image from Rooney campaign ad
Sarasota Herald-Tribune:
Even though Social Security checks and paychecks for troops overseas will be affected, U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney says Congress is almost certainly headed toward shutting down the federal government over the growing budget dispute in Washington.
During a stop in Port Charlotte on Saturday, Rooney, the Palm Beach County Republican who represents part of Charlotte in Congress, told me that the differences are just too great between the Republicans and Democrats. He said unless Democrats in the Senate offer much bigger budget cuts, there will be no avoiding a shutdown.
“I don’t see how we can avoid it,” Rooney said in a quick interview in the parking lot at the Charlotte County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner on Saturday, which the media was barred from attending. “I see that it is more and more likely that there is going to be a government shutdown.”
To Rooney's credit, he's one of the Republicans who last week supported a bipartisan funding bill to prevent a government shutdown, but the very fact that Congress passed that legislation undercuts his assertion that a government shutdown is unavoidable. The truth is that John Boehner faces a choice: he can move forward without tea party Republicans and work out a bipartisan deal to prevent a government shutdown, or he can take the political road, pleasing his party's political base, but effectively guaranteeing a shutdown. It's certainly possible that he'll choose the latter road, but Rooney's notion that a shutdown is unavoidable is utter bunk. Whether or not we have a shutdown is a choice, and that choice will be made by John Boehner.