The Politics of the Government Shutdown
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 27 September 2023
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today's episode Brian and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss the looming government shutdown and what it shows about the U.S. capitalist system. Is it a stable democracy if it can't stay open? Why aren't lawmakers using the clear solutions at hand?
Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at rdwolff.com.
Please make an urgently-needed contribution to The Socialist Program by joining our Patreon community at patreon.com/thesocialistprogram. We rely on the generous support of our listeners to keep bringing you consistent, high-quality shows. All Patreon donors of $5 a month or more are invited to join the monthly Q&A seminar with Brian.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Another government shutdown might be upon us as the September 30th deadline to pass a federal budget looms. |
| 0:09.5 | Massive austerity cuts to public programs are on the table. |
| 0:13.8 | And Congress is yet again unable to do anything other than argue over how to harm working people. |
| 0:22.0 | We need a new system. We need a new society. We need to demand that which may have sounded |
| 0:28.1 | impossible even a few weeks ago, but is not only realizable, but an imperative necessity. We are excited to have Professor Richard Wolfe join us again for our regular weekly segment, |
| 1:02.8 | where we talk about the biggest stories related to the economy. |
| 1:06.5 | I'm your host, Brian Becker. |
| 1:08.7 | The Socialist Program brings you content several days a week. |
| 1:11.7 | Thanks to the support of our patrons at patreon.com forward slash the Socialist Program. |
| 1:19.0 | We appreciate all of your support and encourage you, if you're not yet, to become a patron today. |
| 1:25.8 | Richard Wolf is the co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. |
| 1:29.1 | He's the author of many books. The latest being the sickness is the system when capitalism |
| 1:34.2 | fails to save us from pandemics or itself. Be sure to check out all of his work at |
| 1:40.2 | R-D-Wolf.com. That's R-D-W-O-L-F dot com. Professor dot com professor wolf welcome back thank you brian i'm glad to be here |
| 1:48.8 | here we go again richard here we go again 21 times since 1976 the congress of the united states |
| 1:58.3 | that you know by constitutional, controls the purse strings, |
| 2:02.6 | has used that power to actually shut the government down. And it wasn't so long ago that it was |
| 2:09.1 | shut down. It was shut down for 34 days. This time the so-called Freedom Caucus, I'm using |
| 2:15.6 | big air quotes around the word freedom, the Freedom Caucus, |
| 2:19.8 | the far right inside of the Republican Party and inside of the Congress, are insisting that they |
| 2:25.5 | won't support a budget resolution unless and until President Biden cancels completely the |
| 2:32.8 | Student Loan Forgiveness, rescinds all unspent |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Socialist Program, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Socialist Program and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.