That video is Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) confronting Republicans on the House floor over changes to the chamber’s rules that
guaranteed a shutdown of the government. House Republicans, on the eve of the shutdown, altered a standing rule of the House that would allow any congressperson to force a vote on legislation which the Senate and House are unable to agree on. In this case, it would have been the Senate's clean continuing spending resolution that would have kept government open.
"The Rules Committee under the rules of the House changed the standing rules of the House of the to take away the right of any member to move to vote to open the government and gave that right exclusively to the Rep leader, is that right?" Van Hollen asks in the video. The Republican in the chair, Jason Chaffetz, confirms that the House adopted the resolution, but he doesn't answer Van Hollen's next question: "Why were the rules rigged to keep the government shut down?"
The answer, of course, is that Republican leadership—not the tea party handful that are supposedly holding them hostage—were so hell-bent on shutting down the government that they changed the rule. It happened in a remarkable Rules Committee meeting in which the chair, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) admitted to Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) that Republicans were not going to allow anyone to force a vote to keep government open. The GOP's excuse: they wanted a conference on a continuing resolution, after months and months of refusing to conference on a budget.
Slaughter: Explain that -- the motion to do what -- [...] to call for the vote on the Senate -- [...] I think you've taken that away.
Sessions: We took that away. [...] We took it away and the reason why is because we want to go to conference.
Slaughter: Oh, mercy. [...] The beating won't end. It gets deeper and deeper. [...] I see the resolve you have. Despite saying ad nauseam you didn't want to shut the government down.
Session: That's correct.
That's correct. The Republicans were resolved to up-end the standing rules of the House, to completely strip the minority of any rights. They were resolved to shut down the government. That's House Republican leadership at work. No tea party member was forcing Republican Speaker John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Pete Sessions to change this rule. Probably no tea party member knows House rules well enough to know this one even existed in the first place.
So-called establishment Republicans wanted this shut down just as much as the extremists, and they're the ones who made it happen. They're the ones who are continuing it, and they're the ones who are threatening the economic stability of the country.