Shutdown Quotes

America flirts with self destruction.

--Financial Times

We're not going to be disrespected, We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is.

 -- Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN)

It's to us Norwegians hard to understand that it can be happening in one of the most influential countries in the world that you can have such a dysfunctional government. It is kind of joke or disbelief. We laugh about it. How is it possible at all? Why would they do that?

--Anders Tvegard, Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation

It feels absurd to be showing up to work in an office that supports democracy abroad when our own government is a shambles.

--State Department employee who wrote in to Andrew Sullivan's blog

I've been trying to figure this out. It seems to me that Boehner could do whatever he wants with Democrats on the floor and still get about 180 or 190 of us. So why doesn't he do that?

--An unnamed Republican Congressman explains to Byron York that even under the Hastert Rule, the House could pass a clean continuing resolution if Boehner would let it

The whole concept is little surreal for our readers, trying to understand why the No. 1 country in the world cannot pass a budget. I come from Lebanon and our parliament is very ineffective, but ludicrous as it sounds, it is better than U.S. Congress when it comes to passing budgets.

--Joyce Karam, Al-Hayat

When ideologies become as calcified, as cocooned and as extremist as those galvanizing the GOP, the American system of government cannot work. But I fear this nullification of the last two elections is a deliberate attempt to ensure that the American system of government as we have known it cannot work. It cannot, must not work, in the mindset of these radicals, because they simply do not accept the legitimacy of a President and Congress of the opposing party. The GOP does not regard the president as merely wrong – but as illegitimate. Not misguided – illegitimate. This is not about ending Obamacare as such (although that is a preliminary scalp); it is about nullifying this presidency, the way the GOP attempted to nullify the last Democratic presidency by impeachment.

--Andrew Sullivan