AMERICA’S government has shut down for the first time since 1996. This is not quite as dramatic as it first sounds: essential services will be maintained and pensioners will still get their Social Security checks as the freeze applies only to discretionary spending. But it is astonishing nevertheless. For months the working assumption among politicos has been that a last-minute deal, even an anticlimactic one which merely delayed the reckoning, would be done. This turns out to have been wrong. Until Congress can pass a continuing resolution to fund the government some 800,000 federal workers will go unpaid, all national parks, monuments and museums will close. To get a sense of where the line between essential and non-essential services falls consider NASA. The agency will close but mission control, which supports astronauts on the International Space Station, will remain open. The economic impact of all this depends entirely on how long the shutdown lasts, which, given that few people expected it to occur, is hard to gauge.

How did this happen? The Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate have spent the past few days trading funding bills with each other. The House would tack on amendments aimed at weakening the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, and the Senate would strip these out and send the bill back. Republicans saw it as negotiating; Democrats as hostage-taking. “You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job,” said Barack Obama a few hours before the deadline passed.

Republicans seem convinced that, due to the unpopularity of Obamacare, Democrats will get the blame for the shutdown. In fact, most polls suggest that the Republicans will attract more blame than the Democrats (The Economist’s YouGov poll suggests a roughly even split). That was certainly the case during the 22-day shutdown of 1995-96, which helped Bill Clinton to thump Bob Dole in the presidential election that followed. Republicans, though, have recently taken a different lesson from that crisis. The problem with that shutdown, they reckon, was that Republicans blinked first.

Clearing up this mess will probably require one side to feel more pain. But that may not happen any time soon. While Democrats may look at the polls and take comfort, Republicans can point to support for their actions amongst conservatives. Having stumbled over a cliff, it may seem preferable for both parties to stay there a while rather than to begin scrambling back up its face.

(Photo credit: AFP)