U.S. President Donald Trump ordered McDonalds for the NCAA champion football team at the White House as the cook was on temporary leave due to the government shutdown, which began on December 21 and is now the longest ever. 

The government shutdown, marked with fruitless negotiations between the Democrat-dominated House of Representatives and Trump, whose exaggerated and misleading speeches and claims always draw attention, hits the headlines of many media outlets every time there is a development.

At present, the 25-day-long shutdown seems to have no end in sight because negotiations between the president and the House Speaker failed with Trump's "Bye Bye" to Pelosi's "No," and also, a proposal of a temporary government reopening put forward by the president's Republican ally got a definite refusal from Trump.

What caused the shutdown?

The sticking point of the partial government shutdown centers on the budget plan for the wall Trump promised and relentlessly pursued both in his campaign and during his current term.

Trump refused to approve a budget unless it included 5.7 billion U.S. dollars for building a wall on the Mexico-U.S. border, which Trump claims will protect the American people from the threats of drugs and throngs of illegal immigrants from Latin America. 

The Democrats have refused to back down on the issue. The Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives are opposed to Trump's plan and they claim it is more of a waste of money than a way to solve the problems Trump is concerned about. 

However, experts believe the impasse is what Trump has to suffer because the Republicans lost the mid-term election in November 2018. 

"The government shutdown is in essence a political wrestling between the Republicans and Democrats," Jin Canrong, a professor and associate dean at the School of International Studies in Renmin University of China, was quoted as saying by huanqiu.com.

"After taking the House of Representatives, the Democrats are ready to resist Trump in his wall plan, while at the same time, Trump wants to defeat the Democrats through the government shutdown."

From the viewpoint of Jin, the 5.7 billion U.S. dollars is really not a big deal in comparison with the U.S. GDP at more than 20 trillion U.S. dollars. So it's the conflicts between the parties that matter.

What's affected by the shutdown? 

There have been many reports of how citizens or government employees have been affected by the shutdown recently. 

One striking outcome is that more than 800,000 federal workers missed their first salaries of the year, which should have been paid on January 11. 

Most of those workers are said to come from the nine Cabinet-level departments including the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Interior and Sate. 

While some of them have stopped working during the shutdown period, the rest of them, including prison guards and FBI agents who are deemed essential, still have to work without pay, though they reportedly will get back pay when the impasse ends. 

Some might say the shutdown would not have much influence on most ordinary U.S. citizens, because most of their demands are dealt with by states' local governments.

"That hurts consumption, and it also hurts contractors who rely on federal money. In view of this, economists are already downgrading quarterly growth by a small proportion," Tom Fowdy, a UK-based political analyst, wrote in an opinion piece published by CGTN.

The longer the shutdown drags on, the more likely the public will feel its spillover effects. 

A list of the U.S. government shutdowns since 1976 

The government shutdown is a tradition in the 243-year-old United States, as there have been 21 federal government shutdowns since 1976 when the budget and appropriations process was enacted, 10 of the 22 gaps in budget funding brought the furlough of federal employees.

Abortion and Obamacare have been blamed for the past shutdowns, but one unique reason includes an instance where President Ronald Reagan invited all the senators and representatives to a dinner together, which led to them missing the deadline for passing the approved budget bill.

Before this late 2018-early 2019 shutdown, the longest one on record occurred under President Bill Clinton. It happened because of a disagreement between Clinton and Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich over federal spending budget.

It's reported that the biggest loss of the shutdowns came during the Obama administration, when the 16-day shutdown cost the economy 2.5 billion U.S. dollars. 

If the current government shutdown continues, economists with Standard & Poor's estimate that the GDP growth rate in the first season of 2019 will reduce at least 0.2 percentage point per week, equaling nearly 6.5 billion U.S. dollars.

Can the impasse last for months or years as Trump said?

Though it's too early to say when the political deadlock will be solved, an unavoidable thing is that both Republicans and Democrats have tried to make concessions.

Based on various media reports, the Democrats – led by a tough Nancy Pelosi – said that we are not doing a wall, because it is immoral and not cost-effective, and as Vox reported, when Pelosi said "no wall," she means not now and not ever. 

According to Vox, one top Democratic aide said they would support physical barriers again if it "makes sense," without clarifying what exactly that would mean.

In face of the longest-ever shutdown, the Republicans also softened their hardline stance. For example, a Republican senator proposed a temporary government reopening, though the proposal was refused by Trump.

Even Trump has seemingly started to look towards a compromise as he backed away from declaring a national emergency to bypass Congress and build the border wall.

As far as these compromises are concerned, the impasse seems unlikely to last months or years, which Trump threatened. 

"Certainly the shutdown will not continue too long. The government will finally open no matter which party concedes more," said Jin.