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Hello, you have reached the executive office of the president.

We apologize, but due to the lapse in federal funding, we are unable to take your call.

Once funding has been restored, our operations will resume.

Please call back at that time. Thank you.

This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about politics.

I'm Dorothy Wickendon, executive editor of The New Yorker.

It's Thursday, October 3rd,

three days into the government shutdown. On Tuesday, President Obama blamed House Republicans for Congress's failure to fund the government, and then he warned them about their threats

not to raise the debt ceiling. If they go through with it this time and force the United States

to default on its obligations

for the first time in history, it'd be far more dangerous than a government shutdown, as bad as a

shutdown is. It would be an economic shutdown.

To talk about how we got here, I'm joined by Ryan Lissa, James Surawicki, and our former China correspondent,

...