Major Garrett Predicts Four or Five-Day of Government Shutdown

In the wake of Glenn Beck announcing yesterday that he would soon leave Fox News, who better for Imus to speak with than Major Garrett, the network’s former Chief White House Correspondent who inexplicably abandoned his post last summer to work for National Journal?
 
“I’ll tell you one thing,” Garrett said of his departure from Fox versus Beck’s. “They’re not the same story.”
 
Imus was curious if Garrett, who surely still speaks to people at Fox News, had heard anything more about Beck’s situation than what is being said publicly.
 
“I have lifted not one single finger to find out why Glenn Beck is leaving,” Garrett said. “And that should come as no surprise to you or anyone familiar with my role in the news division at Fox. To say that a wall separates news from Glenn Beck would be an over simplification.”
 
A simple “no” would have sufficed.
 
President Obama met with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last night at the White House, where they attempted to resolve the impasse over the federal budget and avoid a government shut down. As of this morning, negotiations remained tenuous.  
 
“They still don’t have an agreement on a number—that’s an important problem,” Garrett said, referring to the amount of cuts Republicans and Democrats want to make to the bloated budget. “They don’t have an agreement on policy—that’s also an important problem.”
 
Had the talks started three weeks ago, Garrett predicted a deal would have been struck by now. “It’s increasingly difficult to see how the two sides come together and don’t avert at least a four or five day shutdown,” said Garrett, who is betting on that outcome.
 
Once both sides finish beating their chests and talking about how terrible the shutdown is, Garrett believes they’ll check their internal polling, realize that neither Party emerges from this mess looking good, and cut a deal. The bigger problem for Republicans, in his view, is that while their Tea Party-inspired base helped them win primaries and create momentum, it was the Independent voters who got them elected.
 
“Independents want a deal,” Garrett pointed out. “The Republican base wants them to stick hard to their principles. You can’t reconcile those two things unless someone says, ‘For now we’re going to take the best deal we can get, put the best face on it, and move on.’”
 
That job, he added, belongs to solely to Speaker Boehner. “He’s closer to it now than I think he was a week ago,” Garrett said. At that point, Boehner and the Republicans were demanding $61 billion in cuts to the budget; yesterday, for the first time, they came down to $40 billion.
 
Should the government shut down, non-essential government offices—like the Parks Department and the IRS—would close, preventing people from enjoying the great outdoors and from receiving their tax refund checks. Imus, however, looks forward to finding out exactly which government employees are deemed “non-essential.”
 
“It’s like how we found out here at Fox that, frankly, you were not essential,” he told his guest. Harsh.
 
-Julie Kanfer