For the first time since 1996, the U.S. government has shut down. Shutdown: Congress sputters on CR

The government has officially shut down.

The partisan gridlock in Washington proved insurmountable, as House Republicans continue to insist on changing, delaying or defunding Obamacare as the price for keeping the government open, while Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama firmly rejected that position.


It’s the first government shutdown since 1996, when Newt Gingrich was the House speaker and Bill Clinton was president. The House and Senate stayed in session until the wee hours Tuesday morning, but there is no clear path toward solving the budgetary impasse.

( POLITICO's full government shutdown coverage)

In a sign of just how entrenched Washington is, Congress is fighting over just a few months of government funding. Sometime in November or December, Congress and the White House will have to agree on a longer-term funding bill to last into 2014. This is just the first fiscal fight of the fall. The debt ceiling must be lifted by Oct. 17.

Stripping Obamacare of its funding has been a centerpiece of the House Republican Conference since the party took the majority in 2010. But this is the first time the GOP has declined to fund government because of the law. Obamacare’s health-insurance exchanges opened as planned Tuesday.

The majority of polls show Republicans will bear the blame for this shutdown. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has privately warned House Republicans that they could lose their majority in 2014 as a result of shutting down the government.

House Republicans’ last-ditch effort Monday night was to try to pass a bill that would allow the leadership to appoint negotiators to a House-Senate conference committee to hash out an agreement on government funding. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he would only assign negotiators if the GOP first passed a six-week funding bill without any changes to the Affordable Care Act.

( WATCH: Shutdown: Democrats vs. Republicans)

The Senate won’t wait for the House to pass it’s motion to go to conference. About midnight, Reid said the upper chamber would retire for the night and reconvene at 9:30 a.m.

“This is a very sad day for our country,” Reid said on the Senate floor. The House has “some jerry-rigged thing about going to conference. It is embarrassing that these people are elected to represent the country are representing the tea party.”

The high-stakes legislative back-and-forth lasted for several days. The House first passed a funding bill two weeks ago, which defunded the health care law. The Senate responded by changing the legislation to fully fund the law. The House then passed several versions of its own bill to keep the fund the government — but with several caveats: first, defunding Obamacare; then a full year delay of Obamacare and a repeal of the medical device tax; then, a delay of Obamacare’s individual mandate and the cancelation of health-insurance subsidies for Capitol Hill lawmakers, aides and administration employees. The Senate dismissed each attempt.

( WATCH: Boehner 'confident' House will pass CR)

Several Senate Republicans said they ultimately expected their colleagues in the House to arrive at something Senate Democrats can pass to keep the government’s lights on — but not on before the government shut down. There was one bipartisan bright spot. The Senate unanimously passed a bill Monday to keep military troops paid during a shutdown, and the president signed it just a few hours before midnight.

“When the House sends things that do have an attraction to members maybe we’ll see a difference,” said Sen. Richard Burr (R) of North Carolina. “We’ll go into a shutdown tomorrow and we’ll figure out how to get out of it. I think it will take a few days.”

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a chief critic of the House’s attempts to attack Obamacare during the government funding debate, said he’d sign onto a clean spending bill if given the chance — and expected sometime soon he would get one.

“Yeah because we can’t win. That’s going to happen sooner or later,” McCain said.

Some Republicans and Democrats think a shutdown could help the atmosphere in Congress. It could aid leadership in reasserting its authority over the rank-and-file. Some Republicans think if the government shuts down now, it would ease pressure ahead of the debt ceiling fight, which is imminent.

The chief question is how long each party can sustain a shutdown before folding.

“At the point where the pain level reaches a level that people then understand that part of being a legislator is knowing how to count,” said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), signaling that there isn’t support in the Senate to delay or defund Obamacare.

Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) continue to be hamstrung by a few dozen conservatives in their party, who seem to reflexively oppose their leadership at every turn. If you ask some of those lawmakers how they plan to force Democrats to defund the health care law, they have an answer.

“We have sent a number of things to the Senate that are consistent with what the president’s already did,” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), speaking of delays to Obamacare. “What we’re doing here is extending what he gave to big businesses and extending that to the rest of the individual mandate.”

The most recent back-and-forth ended when the Senate killed a House funding proposal Monday night, which delayed for one year the mandate in Obamacare that individuals buy insurance and ended health insurance subsidies for lawmakers, Hill staff and the White House.

“They have lost their minds,” Reid said, adding. “The House once again has passed ridiculous policy riders that are dead on arrival over here.”

Both parties worked vociferously to deflect blame. Speaking on the floor earlier on Monday night, Boehner said “the American people don’t want a shutdown, and neither do I.”

From the outset of this debate, House Republican leadership had trouble culling support from their party. As late as Friday, some House proposals that got rejected resoundingly by the Senate saw open opposition in the House Republican Conference.

For example, at a closed House Republican Conference meeting Monday afternoon, New York Rep. Peter King stood up in a closed party meeting and said he was opposed to the bill that cancelled health-insurance subsidies. Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks suggested that Republicans force federal judges to get their health insurance from Obamacare, since they deemed the law constitutional.

Yet, the bill prevailed — albeit with GOP defections.

“We’re going to cut our salary by $5,000 to $10,000, but the president should live under Obamacare too,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), one of President Barack Obama’s chief antagonists in the House.

Meanwhile, there were other attempts to avoid a government shutdown ongoing on Capitol Hill.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told Boehner on Monday that she would provide a healthy number of votes from House Democrats to pass a multi-month funding resolution. But that didn’t happen.

And earlier in the day in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gauged support for a one-week clean CR. That strategy was met with opposition by House conservatives like Reps. Tom Price (Ga.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio), who said they would likely vote against such a measure.