[Ibby]

The Democrats in the senate AGREED to the amount of spending cuts the Republicans demanded. The disagreement now is that the Republicans want to cut, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to, uh, protect the environment, and to introduce controversial cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and other wildly popular programs that consistently poll extremely well even among self-described conservatives. The Tea Party has flat-out demanded that the Republicans shut down the government - and the Democrats have agreed to every single budgetary concession the Republican leadership demanded. There IS going to be a shutdown - and it's NOT about the budget.