The stalemate over how to reopen the government is being inflamed by something no policy provision can fix: A deep-seeded distrust between the leaders of the parties.

The trust gap has a lengthy history and a profusion of roots. But it’s resurfacing now over the thorny issue driving the budget impasse: Affordable Care Act subsidies set to expire at the end of the year.

Republicans say they’re open to discussing the topic, but they’re insisting those talks happen later in the year.

“Dec. 31 is when that expires,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters Friday in the Capitol. “So Congress has three months to negotiate that.”

That timeline is a non-starter with Democrats, who simply don’t trust GOP leaders to remain good to their word, particularly when it comes to strengthening a health care law that Republicans have fought to dismantle since it was adopted in 2010.

“Why would we believe that Republicans have any interest in addressing the Affordable Care Act, based on their word, when for 15 years Republicans have been doing everything possible to gut the Affordable Care Act?” asked House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) put it succinctly this week: “We think that when they say later, they mean never.”

The result has been a deadlock with no obvious way out.

Republicans say they won’t negotiate before the Democrats help reopen the government. Democrats say they won’t help reopen the government until the Republicans negotiate. And neither side has given an inch in the three days since the government shut its doors.

Distrust between the parties is not exactly new, especially in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, when hundreds of Trump supporters stormed into the building in a failed effort to negate his 2020 election defeat. More than 100 law enforcement officers were injured; members of Congress were forced to evacuate the chambers in a panic; and relations between the parties soured into tensions that sometimes resurface even more than four years later.

In the current budget debate, however, the roots of the distrust are more specific to the topics at hand.

For one thing, the Republicans’ decision to walk away from a bipartisan spending deal last December has diminished the Democrats’ confidence that they can bank on spending deals, even when they’re endorsed by GOP leaders. In that case, Johnson had signed off on the bipartisan package, only to reverse course and oppose it in the face of social media attacks from Elon Musk, the billionaire tech titan, who said the proposal didn’t cut spending deeply enough. 

The flip-flopping is still on the minds of top Democrats, who carry a bad taste in their mouths. 

“We’re not going to take pinky promises, like Speaker Johnson hands out to his conference,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “His word doesn’t mean much to House Democrats, at this point, after backing away from a truly bipartisan CR in December.”

Another source of distrust relates to so-called rescissions, the tool Trump has tapped to shift funding — or cancel it altogether — even after Congress has earmarked it for specific programs. Democrats have bashed the maneuver as a form of “theft,” since the Constitution lends Congress the sole powers of appropriations. They’ve questioned why they should compromise with Republicans on bipartisan funding bills, when Republicans can undo that work with a partisan vote — or no vote at all.  

They want specific language designed to rein in Trump’s use of rescissions — a demand Republicans have refused. 

“It’s not a gentleman’s agreement. There is no trust that they will make good on any promise,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. “It’s gotta be there [in legislation]. It’s gotta be written.” 

Perhaps the single greatest source of distrust, however, is the issue Jeffries has been pounding all week: The Republicans’ historic opposition to the Affordable Care Act, which was adopted under former President Obama without any GOP support. 

Republicans, then and now, have warned that the law represents a government takeover of health care markets better left to for-profit companies and free-market forces. Indeed, repealing the ACA was the first major effort under Trump’s first term. It failed only when several moderate Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and the late John McCain (Ariz.) — voted with Democrats to salvage the law.

Given that history, Democrats aren’t ready to accept any handshake deals, but instead are demanding specific legislation that extends the expiring subsidies, which were enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic under President Biden. 

“We need an ironclad legislative agreement to address the health care issues that we have raised, including the Affordable Care Act,” Jeffries said.

That sentiment is shared by virtually every rank-and-file House Democrat, which has helped Jeffries and his leadership team in uniting their caucus against the GOP spending bill.

“There’s nothing in Donald Trump’s history, going back long before he was elected president, to suggest that any kind of handshake deal or agreement with him is something that you can count on,” said Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-Va.). “So I personally will not be comfortable with any kind of verbal assurances, either from Republican leadership here [in Congress] or the president or the White House.”

GOP leaders, however, are in no mood to tackle health care, or any other issue, as part of this month’s spending fight. They’re insisting that Democrats accept the GOP’s short-term package, which extends funding through Nov. 21, largely at current levels. Other issues, they say, can be debated later. 

“I don’t have anything to negotiate,” Johnson said. “The House did its job.” 

A few hours later, the Speaker would drive that point home by cancelling all House activity scheduled for next week. 

The ObamaCare issue has created a dilemma for GOP leaders. They’ve spent years bashing the law as a Marxist takeover of health care, and conservatives on Capitol Hill are already clamoring to allow the subsidies to expire on Jan. 1. 

Yet there are also a number of more moderate Republicans — many of them facing tough reelection contests in next year’s midterms — who want to extend the tax credits, at least beyond those elections. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has said repeatedly that he’s willing to talk about extending the ACA tax credits. But in an acknowledgment of the opposition coming from conservatives who don’t want to endorse anything ObamaCare-related, he’s making no promises that any such effort will succeed.

“We can’t make commitments or promises on the COVID subsidies, because that’s not something that we can guarantee that there are the votes there to do,” Thune said. “What I’ve said is that I’m open to having conversations with our Democrat colleagues about how to address that issue. 

“But that can’t happen while the government is shut down.”