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UNO political scientist: expect shutdown, debt ceiling issues to flare up again in early 2014

A UNO political scientist says Wednesday’s vote to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling accomplished very little.

Congress voted Wednesday to fund the government through January 15th, and raise the debt ceiling until February 7th. UNO Political Science professor Paul Landow says that sets up the possibility for another showdown in early 2014.

“The only thing that would keep us out of this situation would be the national Republican Party and the Republican members of Congress agreeing that they took such a shellacking over this deal during the last few weeks that they don’t want to go through it again, it’s too damaging to the party image and the prospects of their officeholders and office-seekers.”

Landow expects the shutdown and debt ceiling to be major campaign issues in the 2014 election.

“The Democrats see it as the Republicans having caused all this, and the Republicans of course are going to try to hang their hat on the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. So each side is going to try to stake out a position, but clearly the polling to date shows that the Republicans have fared much worse on the shutdown/debt ceiling discussion than the Democrats.”

Landow says the 16-day government shutdown caused volatility in the stock market. He says lawmakers also have no sense of urgency to deal with other pressing issues.