Did you ever think you’d see the day when Republicans argued in favor of nationalizing the banking industry.

Well, you made it:

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina of the Senate Budget Committee said today on “This Week” that he is open to “nationalizing the banks.”

“I think if you put most of our major banks under a ‘stress test,’ they’re going to fail,” Graham told me.

“This idea of nationalizing bank is not comfortable but I think we have got so many toxic assets spread throughout the banking and financial community throughout the world that we’re going to have to do something that no one ever envisioned a year ago, no one likes,” he said.

“To me banking and housing are the root cause of this program,” Graham said. “I would not take off [the table] the idea of nationalizing the banks.”

However Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York argued against nationalizing the nation’s banks.

“You can have a big, bold plan without nationalization,” Schumer said.