What does each side want?published at 15:26 BST
Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent
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.
What’s the point, they wonder, with negotiating spending-level agreements if Trump will just ignore them?
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.
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