Some of the doomsday rhetoric surrounding the consequences of a government shut down sounds an awful lot like the fearmongering that was used to scare lawmakers into passing the 2008 bailout bill, which quickly turned out to be a cynical bait and switch.

Democratic Senator Tom Harkin has warned that if Republicans refuse to cave in, the situation will be “as dangerous as the breakup of the Union before the Civil War.”

Lindsay Siler, the issues campaign director for Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action, warns that, “a government shutdown will shutter crucial services the American people depend on and wreak havoc with our economy.”