Washington is bracing for busy days ahead, as the deadline for a government shutdown quickly

approaches. To discuss that and more, we turn to the analysis of Brooks and K-PART. That's

New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan K-PART, associate editor for the Washington

Post.

Gentlemen, welcome. So nice to see you.

David, Congress has left for the long weekend. I guess they think it's a good time to take

a break, but we are awfully close to this government shutdown. How close do you think

we really are?

Quite close. Well, in time terms, it's basically weak. In probability terms, there's a very high

probability the government will shut down and will be where we've been before. And the

core cause is that there are a group of members of Congress who are not interested in practical

governance. They're right that our deficits are too big on the far right of the Republican

party, but they have no strategy to get there. And so they're basically a bunch of nihilistic

performance artists. And that looks great on a business car.

Yeah, that was a mighty name in high school.

And so Speaker McCarthy has to decide what to do. And the core simple truth should be,

well, we don't allow performance artists to have power. And he's giving them a lot of

power because he's refusing to or is unable or unwilling to cut a deal with the Democrats

and sort of freeze out the people on the right. And in my view, he should take them on

right now because his power will wane and that his fear is he'll lose his job as Speaker.

But I think his, if he wants to keep that Speaker job, he'll be weaker in two weeks. He'll

be weaker in three weeks when everyone's upset about a government shutdown than he is

...