Nightly News   |  April 07, 2011

Chuck Todd: ‘70 percent chance’ of a shutdown

As the longstanding divide between Democrats and Republicans widens over budget issues, the chances of a government shutdown are increasing. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>> now to chief white house correspondent chuck todd at the white house . what is the biggest sticking point?

>> the white house will say and even though on capitol hill say it is abortion. it's not the number, is it going to be $30 billion or a $60 billion number. it's the issue with planned parenthood . it's always against the law for federal taxpayer dollars to be used to fund abortions, but this is about taking money away from any institution that even privately performs abortion procedures, and they can't figure out how to rewrite that. aides to the speaker and president are trying to come up with language that will satisfy both bases, but these are the same culture wars the two parties have been fighting for 25 years and it's broughts to this point.

>> given that, chuck, how likely is a shut-down.

>> folks at the white house believe there's a 75% chance that there's going to be at least a weekend shutdown. you look at the politics, our own wall street journal poll, and republicans wouldn't pay a political price with their base for not shutting down. they might pay one if they didn't shut down. that's what the -- the way the white house is looking at this, and what does this mean this weekend? there's a lot of spring break trips. this is a weekend where all over washington kids from across the country are coming here to look at the declaration of independence and the constitution, and if that