The US is hurtling towards a government shutdown on Tuesday night, and there appears to be little appetite on either side of the partisan divide to avoid it.
A last-ditch meeting between President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders in Congress made little progress. If anything, both sides have been digging deeper into their positions.
I think we're headed to a shutdown because the Democrats won't do the right thing, Vice President JD Vance told reporters after the meeting at the White House. You don't put a gun to the American people's head and say, 'Unless you do exactly what Senate and House Democrats want you to do, we're going to shut down your government.'
Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer said there were still very large differences between his party and the White House.
No one sounded optimistic.
These positions hardened further on Monday night after Trump posted an AI video mocking the Democratic leadership. It depicted House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries dressed in a sombrero and a fake moustache, and Schumer saying in an artificial voice that undocumented migrants should get free healthcare. Both men responded angrily, with Jeffries calling it bigotry.
In terms of the substantive demands from each side, Republicans want a short-term extension of current spending levels – essentially kicking the legislative can a bit farther down the road. They’re happy with the way things are going, particularly since the Trump administration has been implementing spending cuts on its own, without the help of congressional budget-setters.
Democrats want that practice to end. They also want a firm agreement to renew the government health-insurance subsidies for low-income individuals that expire at the end of the year – something Republicans have been reluctant to do so far.
Those are the negotiating positions of both sides, but government shutdown fights are about more than policy – they're about politics.
Republicans think they have the political high ground. The party that makes demands in exchange for keeping the government open – in this case the Democrats – typically gets the lion's share of the blame when a shutdown happens.
Trump and Republican congressional leaders are already claiming that they are the reasonable ones. They’re the ones, they say, who simply want to buy more time to negotiate without the adverse consequences of a shutdown.
Of course, Democrats don't see it that way. They believe healthcare is a winning issue for them, so they want the debate to be on whether millions of Americans will lose the ability to afford medical insurance.
Complicating all this for Democrats is the reality that many Republicans seem at peace with an extended government closure.
Positions and government programmes deemed nonessential during the closure will be permanently shuttered – an expansion of the Department of Government Efficiency cuts from earlier this year.
In the end, however, a shutdown fight is a test of wills. It’s a test of which side is best able to tolerate political pain.
The most recent government shutdown, during Trump's first term, lasted 35 days, setting a record as the longest in American history. Although the fight was over spending on the president's proposed US-Mexico border wall, it ended because federal air traffic controllers – who were working without pay – began staying home, threatening massive disruption to US air travel.
Shutdowns can be unpredictable. And while both sides seem to be itching for a fight, there's no telling when, or how, this fight will end.
