California Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, claims anti-government ideologues dominate the GOP and for them forcing a shutdown would be a victory. She says they are using healthcare battle as an excuse to shut it down.

Pelosi says the goal of some in the GOP is to get the government out of the lives of Americans by handing Social Security over to private bankers and allowing Medicare to “wither on the vine.”

She says, according to AP, that GOP efforts to derail health-care reform and shut down the government have “no prospect of prevailing.” Ms. Pelosi said of Republicans,“I call them legislative arsonists,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union”.

However, there are two sides to every story. Well, this IS politics, so 5 sides…

Bloomberg reports that Republican Senator Ted Cruz is leading the congressional Republican fight to defund the Affordable Care Act, as the threat of a government shutdown nears, and he said he expects Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, to strip a bill the Republican-led House passed on Sept. 20 of the health-care language.

“I believe we should stand our ground,” said Cruz on the “Fox News Sunday” program. “The House is the only body where Republicans have the majority, so the House has to lead on this,” said Cruz.

House Speaker John Boehner will begin passing individual bills funding “one department at a time,” starting with the military, if the Democratic-led Senate blocks a stopgap government funding bill that also chokes off funds to the health law, said Cruz.

Harry Reid has said the House bill is “dead” in the Senate. He said he will have the votes to remove the health-care language from the bill before sending it back to the House. No Democrats and only about one-third of the 46 Republicans in the Senate support the House effort.

The fact is, even some Republicans are saying that Cruz and his supporters are headed for defeat. Democrats who control the Senate will never vote to end the health law, and even if they did, the president would veto it.

“Tactics and strategies ought to be based on what the real world is, and we do not have the political power to do this,” Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” program. “In the end, House Republicans will have to surrender”, he said.“The exercise is fine,” he said. “We’re not about to shut the government down.”

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