On Sunday, Savannah Guthrie of NBC’s Meet the Press attacked Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on the government shutdown by suggesting that Congress should have no say in whether Obamacare was funded or applied – and in the process, blamed Republicans for the government shutdown. She asked Paul:

[T]hey have tried to defund ObamaCare more than 40 times. They know what the result will be. They live in the real world too. They knew this action would lead to a shutdown, and it did.

When Paul stated that Obama was unwilling to negotiate unless 100% of Obamacare was funded, Guthrie then asked whether it was even legitimate for Congress to oppose Obamacare in the first place:

But why is it even a matter of a negotiation when it's passed both houses of Congress, it's been signed by the president, it's been challenged in the Supreme Court, it's been upheld by the Supreme Court. It was a central issue in the 2012 election campaign, and the president won reelection. Why is that a legitimate point of negotiation right now?

Paul then schooled Guthrie on what Congress is supposed to do under the Constitution: “Well, because it's Congress's job to oversee spending. The power of the purse resides with Congress and they fund programs every year.” When Paul said that Congress was willing to compromise with Obama on Obamacare for purposes of ending the shutdown, Guthrie then suggested that Paul had to “like and want to keep” part of Obamacare in order to end the shutdown – a false premise, given that you don’t have to like Obamacare in order to compromise on it with a Democratic president and Senate.

By way of contrast, Guthrie’s first guest on Sunday was Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, who faced questions like this, on the debt ceiling:

One of the reasons you're here is to sound that alarm. If this country were to default on its obligations, what would be the consequence in the economy? I mean, are you talking catastrophe?