Both Parties Are Resigned to Deadlock as Shutdown Takes Hold

 

Both Parties Are Resigned to Deadlock as Shutdown Takes Hold

 

Republicans, who hold a governing trifecta, have adopted a mostly passive stance while Democrats dig in for a fight, with both feeling they have the political upper hand.

 

Annie Karni

By Annie Karni

Reporting from Washington

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/us/politics/parties-deadlock-shutdown.html

Oct. 5, 2025

 

At the White House, President Trump is posting A.I.-generated memes about the government shutdown, depicting his wonky budget director dressed as the Grim Reaper and ready to visit death on the federal bureaucracy.

 

In the Senate, Democrats show no sign of backing down from their demands in the shutdown fight, while Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, has given verbal shrugs to reporters who ask about the status of his nonexistent negotiations with the other party about how to bring the crisis to an end.

 

“I don’t know that there’s a lot to sort out,” Mr. Thune said on MSNBC on Friday, before sending senators home for the weekend.

 

And in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson has canceled votes for this week, telling his members they could stay home for the third straight week given the shutdown logjam.

 

With Mr. Trump and lawmakers having made no progress on a deal that would reopen the government, one thing was clear as the shutdown headed into its second workweek: There was little sense of urgency in Washington about cleaning up a mess that has thousands of federal workers facing furloughs and possible layoffs, and could disrupt critical federal programs.

 

It all reflects the reality of two parties so convinced that they have the political advantage in their partisan battle that a shutdown has seemed inevitable for weeks, and a quick resolution feels out of reach.

 

Republicans who hold a governing trifecta have adopted a mostly passive posture in the shutdown fight, insisting that Democrats accept their short-term government funding bill without concessions.

 

Staring down the shutdown deadline, they did not even bother engaging in the typical political theater that often precedes such time-crunch crises on Capitol Hill. In shutdown showdowns past, lawmakers worked late into the evening or the early hours of the morning to at least appear as if they were doing everything possible to head off disaster. This time around, Mr. Thune did not keep the Senate in session much past the dinner hour last Tuesday after a pair of failed votes made it clear that Congress would surely miss the midnight deadline for funding the government.

 

The weekend break was more evidence that they felt little pressure to reassure Americans they were on the job and working hard to break the logjam. Mr. Trump’s trolling has only underscored the blasé attitude.

 

It was not always like this.

 

“In 2013, the shutdown felt big, novel, even extreme,” said Brendan Buck, who served as a top adviser to former Speakers John A. Boehner and Paul D. Ryan, both Republicans.

 

That year, amid a bitter budget standoff over President Barack Obama’s health care law, Republicans shut down the government for the first time in two decades. The ordeal carried with it a sense of fear and urgency. Mr. Obama himself appeared in the White House briefing room to appeal for a last-minute deal as the clock ticked toward the midnight deadline. The shutdown lasted 16 days.

 

Ahead of the government shutdown in 2018 over Mr. Trump’s demand for border wall funding, the Senate did not adjourn until 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, the day that funding was set to lapse. Then senators worked through the rest of the weekend trying to forge an agreement that could reopen the government before the workweek began. They failed, and the shutdown lasted 35 days, the longest in history.

 

This time, there was no midnight oil burned, no bipartisan talks, no presidential appearances to make final pleas, and there is no apparent desire to change that anytime soon.

 

“We’ve learned since then that shutdowns have pretty minimal political impact and the economy barely feels it,” said Mr. Buck, who worked through the 2013 shutdown. “When it doesn’t feel like there are a ton of consequences, it’s easy for the theater to displace the urgency.”

 

Former Representative Patrick McHenry, the North Carolina Republican who helped steer the House away from a shutdown in 2023, predicted that the gridlock would continue until lawmakers felt more consequences from their voters for doing nothing. He compared it to a professional wrestling match, where both sides need to force the opposition to submit.

 

“It’s not good will that brings policymakers together,” Mr. McHenry said. “It’s pain. There’s no urgency until the political pain increases.”

 

That may not come for a few weeks. Active-duty military service members will miss their first check on Oct. 15, unless lawmakers find a way to fund the government before that. Federal employees who were furloughed last week are set to miss their first full paycheck this week.

 

Until then, the only political pressure that seemed to be driving any decisions on Capitol Hill was the energy from the base that was giving Democrats more gumption to hold out.

 

More than 80 percent of voters want to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits that Democrats are demanding must be part of any spending deal before they will allow it to move, according to a new poll from KFF.

 

On Friday, Democrats tried to imbue a sense of the real-world consequences to the lackluster proceedings.

 

“He thinks this is funny,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said of the president. “He thinks people are going to joke about this. I promise you, they are not.”

 

Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, said that people were already getting letters warning them of increases in their health care payments.

 

“We are perfectly willing and capable of doing bipartisan compromises,” said Mr. Schatz, who in March voted with Republicans to keep the government open. “We need a dance partner. We are sitting here saying, ‘We are willing to solve this problem with you. You have to sit down and work with us to solve this urgent health care crisis.’”

 

At the same time, Mr. Trump appears to feel he paid no lasting political price for overseeing the longest shutdown in history during his first term.

 

“A lot of good can come down from shutdowns,” he told reporters in the Oval Office last week. On social media, the president went further. “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” he wrote.

 

Republicans, for their part, have taken to accusing Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, of holding government funding hostage to appease restive liberal voters and protect his own job.

 

“Chuck Schumer is afraid that the Marxist far-left corner of his base is going to challenge him in New York,” Mr. Johnson said on Friday.

 

Yet it was not clear what Republicans planned to do to try to change Mr. Schumer’s calculus and extract the eight Democratic votes they would need to reopen the government.

 

On Friday afternoon, Mr. Thune and Mr. Schumer could be seen chatting casually on the Senate floor as they voted for the fourth time on the same pair of dueling short-term government funding bills that once again did not have the votes to move ahead.

 

But there was no plan for a more formal meeting. They left the Capitol for the weekend prepared to pick up right where they left off on Monday: nowhere.

 

Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times.