United States President Donald Trump and the Republicans are facing their first major budget test.
They need support from the Democrats on key issues, including building a border wall with Mexico, and the repeal of Obamacare.
Neither looks likely, which could lead to an impasse.
US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan says the efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare are only in the conceptual stage.
"These are ongoing talks that we're having. We want our members to talk with each other about how we can improve the bill to get consensus. Those productive talks are happening we're at the concept stages right now. The Vice President has been instrumental in bringing together different groups from our conference to talk about concepts."
Mr Ryan refused to put a deadline on the bill, but he did describe the discussions as "productive".
Mr Trump is pushing for border wall funding, a cornerstone of his election campaign, to be included in the spending legislation.
White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus says progress has been made.
"Well, we've already seen progress in regard to getting border security within the CR (continuing resolution) so I'm pretty confident we're going to get something that's satisfactory to the President with regard to border security."
But in a series of tweets the US President wrote that the Democrats don't want money from the budget going towards the border wall, even though he says it will stop drugs and "very bad" MS 13 gang members.
The tweets appeared after White House budget director Mick Mulvaney accused the Democrats of "holding hostage national security" by opposing the US $1.5 billion to help build the wall.
Mr Trump also wrote that Obamacare is in serious trouble and that without "big money" it "will die" far sooner than anyone thought.
The House's minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, says the onus is on the Republicans, not the Democrats, to keep the government open.
"The Republicans have the vote in the House and the Senate and the White House to keep government open. The burden to keep it open is on the Republicans. The wall is, in my view, immoral, expensive and unwise and when the President says well, 'I promised a wall during my campaign', I don't think he said he was going to pass billions of dollars of cost of the wall on to the taxpayer."
Democrats say negotiations were progressing well until Mr Trump decided to get personally involved.
His decision to speak out on the border wall and Obamacare has halted momentum.
Without progress in negotiation, the possibility of a government shut-down becomes very real.
Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer is urging Mr Trump to stay out of it.
"The Democratic and Republican leaders of both the House and Senate were making good progress. And I'm very hopeful we can get a budget done by Friday. We've asked the president not to interfere. If he doesn't interfere we can get this done. If he demands things, poison pills like the wall, which not only Democrats but Republicans oppose - every single Republican on the border, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico oppose it - we can get this done. So we'd ask him to let us do our work, not throw in some last-minute poison pills that could undo it and we can get this done."
