Representative Jerry Nadler of New York’s tenth district compared House Republicans to the Mafia and accused them of taking hostages on MSNBC’s The Cycle this afternoon. “Essentially, what the Republicans are doing is saying, like a 1930s gangster movie, ‘That’s a nice economy you got over, pity if it should happen to blow up if you don’t pay me off what I want,’” Nadler said when asked about the debt-ceiling negotiations. “That’s a direct threat, and the hostage is the entire economy.”