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  3. As midnight on September 30th approached, everybody on Capitol Hill blamed everybody else for the imminent shutdown of America’s

As midnight on September 30th approached, everybody on Capitol Hill blamed everybody else for the imminent shutdown of America’s

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问题    As midnight on September 30th approached, everybody on Capitol Hill blamed everybody else for the imminent shutdown of America’s government. To a wondering world, the recriminations missed the point. When you are brawling on the edge of a cliff, the big question is not "Who is right?" , but "What the hell are you doing on the edge of a cliff?"
   The shutdown itself is tiresome but bearable. The security services will remain on duty, pensioners will still receive their cheques and the astronauts on the International Space Station will still be able to breathe. Some 800,000 non-essential staff at federal agencies (out of 2.8 million) are given leaves without pay, while another 1.3 million are being asked to toil on without pay. Non-urgent tasks will be shelved until a deal is reached and the money starts to flow again. The trouble is, the shutdown is a symptom of a deeper problem: the federal lawmaking process is so polarized that it has become paralyzed. And if the two parties cannot bridge their differences by around October 17th, disaster looms.
   It gets worse. Later this month the federal government will reach its legal borrowing limit, known as the "debt ceiling" . Unless Congress raises that ceiling, Uncle Sam will soon be unable to pay all his bills. In other words, unless the two parties can work together, America will have to close which of its obligations not to honor. It could slash spending so deeply that it causes a recession. Or it could default on its debts, which would be even worse, and unimaginably more harmful than a mere government shutdown. No one in Washington is that crazy, surely?
   In the long term, America needs to tackle polarization. The problem is especially acute in the House, because many states let politicians draw their own electoral maps. Unsurprisingly, they tend to draw ultra-safe districts for themselves. This means that a typical congressman has no fear of losing a general election but is terrified of a primary challenge. Many therefore pander to extremists on their own side rather than forging sensible centrist deals with the other. This is no way to run a country. Electoral reforms, such as letting independent commissions draw district boundaries, would not suddenly make America governable, but they would help. It is time for less cliff-hanging, and more common sense.

The phrase "pander to" (Para. 4) probably means_____.
选项 A、cater to
B、pick out
C、appeal to
D、buy out
答案A
解析 含义题。根据题干关键词定位在文章第四段。pander to所在句子的前一句提到“……反而对最基本的挑战感到害怕”，该句意为“因此，许多人______他们自己这边的极端分子，而不是与另一边建立明智的中间派协议”，所以pander to意为“迎合，投合”，故A项为正确答案。
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