The blame game is underway

Predictions vary at this early point on which party will be blamed for a prolonged shutdown.

“In all likelihood, neither party will come out ahead but one will lose more than the other,” said Joshua Huder, a congressional expert at the at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute in Washington.

But Huder suggested that congressional Democrats seeking to tack-on extra health care-related items to a must-pass short-term government funding extension could skew the blame toward them.

“We'll see how it plays out," he said, b"ut I don't think they're in a blameless position.”