How a perfect storm of partisan politics fueled a historic shutdown

Washington’s stubborn budget impasse found an ignominious place in history on Wednesday when it entered its 36th day, marking the longest government shutdown since the nation’s founding.

It didn’t happen by accident. 

Instead, a variety of factors conspired to cause both sides to dig in for weeks without ceding an inch — a perfect storm of political brinkmanship, clashing ideologies and deep-rooted distrust that’s left Congress stumbling to find an elusive resolution before the economic damage gets worse.

The deadlock has put a pall over Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are frustrated, staffers aren’t getting paid, and the mood is dark, even compared to shutdowns of years past. And while senators appear to be inching toward a deal this week, the progress is fragile and a breakthrough far from certain.

“It feels different, looks different — it is definitely in a different place,” said a former top Democratic aide who maintains close contact with Capitol Hill. “Everybody has a multitude of reasons, but the vibe is just gloomy.”

While no one factor is driving the shutdown by itself, President Trump’s decision to remain on the sidelines of the debate, sources said, is perhaps the greatest single reason for the historic deadlock. While the president had hosted bipartisan leaders at the White House on Sept. 29, two days before the shutdown, his focus since then has shifted largely to foreign affairs, including two separate overseas trips. He has vowed not to negotiate with Democrats until the government is reopened. 

Trump’s distance from the action is unique — presidents from Reagan to Clinton to Obama had actively engaged the other side during shutdowns in search of deals — but it’s also strategic. 

Trump has characterized the shutdown as an “unprecedented opportunity” to fire federal workers and otherwise shrink the size of government, which was already a top priority of his second term. Two weeks into the impasse, he promoted an image of his budget chief, Russell Vought, as a kind of government-gutting “Grim Reaper” character. Vought quickly embraced the persona.

The hands-off approach has frustrated some Republicans, who see Trump as the only figure with the power to break the stalemate. And it’s infuriated Democrats, who are accusing the president of being AWOL while more and more people suffer the effects of the shutdown. 

“Donald Trump and the Republicans cannot govern,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters Tuesday in the Capitol. “These people are deeply unqualified.” 

Public perceptions have also contributed to the lengthy deadlock. In the early weeks of the funding impasse, Capitol Hill staffers and political observers marveled at how the government shutdown — unlike in the past — was far from the biggest news in the country. 

Not only had foreign policy consumed the headlines, but so too had many of the Trump administration’s other aggressive actions. The president sent National Guard troops to U.S. cities. His Justice Department indicted his political opponents. The Defense Department attacked foreign ships in international waters in the name of fighting drug trafficking. The list went on. 

Those developments diverted attention — and at times overshadowed — the shutdown news emanating from Washington, where there was no progress to report. That lessened the attention — and pressure — on lawmakers to negotiate a way to reopen the government.

Trump has also taken unilateral steps during the shutdown to ensure that some federal programs and employees are paid, including military personnel and young mothers receiving nutrition aid. The emergency funds won’t last forever, but in the short term they’ve acted to eliminate certain pressure points that might have otherwise compelled Congress to reach a deal sooner.

An additional factor hanging over the shutdown has been a deep distrust between the parties. A trust gap isn’t new on Capitol Hill, but two factors have exacerbated tensions during the shutdown: The importance of Affordable Care Act subsidies in the fight and Republicans’ funding moves earlier in the year.

Democrats say they need assurances on the Obamacare tax credits because they simply don’t trust Republicans to uphold promises on a program they’ve spent a more than a decade demonizing. And Democrats have howled at Republicans twice using a partisan maneuver to claw back funds that were previously approved on a bipartisan basis.

Republicans, meanwhile, were certainly not expecting the shutdown to last this long. 

They ran the same exact playbook that they successfully employed in March: Have the House pass a stopgap bill funding the government at current levels, first approved under the Biden administration, without any partisan poison pills — and dare Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Democrats to reject it.

Schumer and nine other Senate Democrats voted to keep the government open back then, infuriating Democrats who had wanted to use the pressure point to fight back against the administration. GOP leaders predicted Schumer would do so again ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline — or at least fold after a few days.

But Schumer was lambasted by the Democrats’ liberal base for his vote in March, and was facing an even more severe backlash if he sided with the Republicans a second time, especially in the face of the looming expiration of certain health care subsidies under ObamaCare. Schumer has stood firm, and Republicans underestimated how dug in the Democrats were.

“I honestly did not believe they would have the audacity to inflict this much pain on the people and show no regard for it whatsoever,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) recently told Politico.

Schumer’s vote for the GOP spending bill in March gave Republicans plenty of ammunition to say that Democrats had flip-flopped solely to demonstrate to an angry base that they were willing to take the fight to Trump, especially heading into Tuesday’s off-year elections. Those dynamics have helped GOP leaders to stand firm in their position, demanding that Schumer flip-flop back and reopen the government. 

On the flip side, Republican-led legislation to extend the subsidies — supported by GOP lawmakers in competitive districts — gave Democrats ammunition to say that the issue is not partisan and needs addressing immediately. They’re portraying Trump and GOP leaders as indifferent to the plight of the millions of Americans facing skyrocketing health care costs at the start of next year. 

Indeed, the shutdown has given Democrats the opportunity to put health care — which they believe will be a central issue in the midterms — front and center for weeks at a time.

Yet it is a big ask to get Republican leaders to agree to extending the enhanced ObamaCare subsidies. Trump had sought unsuccessfully to gut the entire law in his first term; no Republicans voted for the plussed-up credits under former President Biden; and party leaders say ObamaCare has created a broken healthcare system. Johnson is facing pressure from conservatives to allow the tax credits to expire altogether. 

Through the shutdown, Republicans repeatedly pointed to dates they thought would be tipping points — all of which came and went without moving Democrats. First it was the date the troops would miss a paycheck, before Trump moved funds; then it was the “No Kings” day of protests that Republicans argued Democrats were waiting for.

Now figures in both parties theorize that Tuesday might be a tipping point, and that lawmakers will be more willing to find an off-ramp after elections in Virginia, California, New York, New Jersey and elsewhere.

“We’re hopeful that after today, the Democrats won’t be as concerned about holding the line in order to appease the Zorhan Mamdani and Omar Fateh wing of their party,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) said at a press conference on Tuesday, referring to Democratic mayoral candidates in New York City and Minneapolis, Minn. “And maybe, just maybe, at least five Senate Democrats will finally come to their senses.”

“I think the election[s] will give somebody some leverage,” echoed the former Democratic aide. “Your sense of, ‘How much am I going to resist?’ will change on Tuesday.”