Here’s quintessential Albany finger-pointing moment in which Senate Minority Leader Dean Shelos, while being grilled by reporters about whether he really is willing to risk a government shutdown, seeks to blame Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver for the Capitol’s dsysfunction, noting he’s the longest-serving legislative leader still in office.

It sounds to me like Skelos is trying to undercut Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson’s argument that he and his conference can’t be blamed for the mess in Albany because they’ve only been in power since January 2009, while the GOP ruled the chamber for more than four decades prior to that.

It’s a little bit of a tortured argument. See what you think:

“Everybody’s assuming that we are automatically going to shut down government,” Skelos said.

“If government is shut down next week it’s because Senator Sampson, who I have a tremendous amount of respect for, Shelly Silver, and Senator Sampson likes to look back, you know, 20 years.”

“Remember the one constant, the one constant in the last 14 years has been Shelly Silver, right? It’s been Shelly Silver. You’ve had different governors, you’ve had different majority leaders. The one constant has been Shelly Silver.”

“The point is everybody’s assuming that we’re going to vote against the extender next week when we haven’t even seen the extender. But we’re getting some movement from the governor now, at least saying that he would include those $400 million in additional Medicaid cuts that we proposed. That’s a positive.”

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