But the landscape is shifting. it s shifting away from these knuckleheads who don t understand the way our international financial system works, the fact that the millions of checks that the government has to send out are all computerized. you just can t stop that. when i say the landscape is shifting, i suspect we re going to have a deal tomorrow, or at least one that the house republican leadership wants where they may bring a clean debt ceiling increase to the house floor. but it would be decoupled from the government shutdown. would you support that? no. i don t. and the reason i don t, ed, is that i think they have heard from wall street, and they don t want to incur wall street s wrath. now, there are tens of millions of people who also would be hurt
By a debt ceiling default. i suspect that s not their motivation, though. i think they heard from some of the bondholders and the big hedge fund managers and the like, and wall street said don t do this. so they re not going to they re going to try not to do it. the problem is if you don t open up the government, we know that there are millions of people being hurt by the government shutdown. the whole american public is being hurt. it really needs to be coupled with opening up the government. if they ll open up the government, if they ll raise the debt ceiling, then we can talk and we can start to move forward finally. and that is the key point. will the democrats hold the line that we re not going to do anything until you open up the government, and then we ll talk debt ceiling. is that where the caucus is right now? i hope. this is just happening as we re talking. sure. i think that s where the caucus will be. and i think in the senate, harry reid is going to say no. and e