With time running out and lawmakers showing little sign of progress on a key budget resolution over the weekend, a government shutdown is looming.
The current spending bill expires on September 30, and if Congress cannot reach an agreement on any budget plan by then, the U.S. government will shut down. House Republicans adjourned the chamber last Thursday, delaying further progress in the talks.
Some analysts said that as the United States continues to fight between the two parties, the United States government "shutdown" is more and more likely. If the U.S. government "shuts down" again, it will have a series of effects on the United States.
The shutdown means millions of U.S. federal employees will have their paychecks suspended and many government services disrupted. Stock market investors are also worried about the impact of the government shutdown on the fourth quarter.
Goldman Sachs recently warned that the resumption of student loan payments, the auto workers' strike and a possible federal government shutdown will all lead to a decline in real gross domestic product growth in the fourth quarter.
The Congress is divided
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California, is charged with holding a divided Republican caucus together, and one of the prerequisites for reaching a budget is a consensus among Republicans in order to pass the House, where Republicans hold only a slim majority.
A major hurdle for McCarthy right now is a group of Republican hard-liners in the House who refuse to budge on further cuts in government spending.
In an effort to avert a government shutdown, late last Wednesday night, the Problem Solvers Caucus - a group of 64 House representatives, evenly split between Democrats and Republicans - put forward a budget framework supported by the group's members. But that bipartisan effort was not enough to get the 435 members of the House to agree.
"I don't know what to think," Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said on a show Sunday. He noted that the Senate had been "moving forward" in negotiating a deal, but talks were interrupted by divisions among Republican members of Congress and "the speaker's inability to get a majority on anything."
"All of a sudden, we're the bad guys because we want to balance the budget," Representative Tim Burchett, Republican of Tennessee, said on a show on Sunday.
Burchett was among the House Republicans who "stood their ground." He said would not support a short-term bill known as a continuing resolution , which would provide a temporary budget until the government can reach an agreement for a longer period of time for the new fiscal year.