Wall Street Journal: “After three years of ducking crises with last-minute deals, Congress finally ran out of ways to patch over its differences. Unable to meet a midnight Monday deadline for funding the government, lawmakers allowed it to shut down.”

New York Times: “A flurry of last-minute moves by the House, Senate and White House late Monday failed to break a bitter budget standoff over President Obama’s health care law, setting in motion the first government shutdown in nearly two decades.”

Washington Post: “The U.S. government began to shut down for the first time in 17 years early Tuesday, after a Congress bitterly divided over President Obama’s signature health-care initiative failed to reach agreement to fund federal agencies.” 

“Senate Democrats are considering leaking a series of emails between the chiefs of staff of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker John A. Boehner regarding employer contributions to congressional staff health care plans,” Roll Call reports.

“Leaking the emails would be unusual, given the taboo over disclosing personal communications between top staffers. But the missives also would reveal Boehner’s position on employer subsidies for congressional staff. Democrats believe the Ohio Republican’s decision to attach an amendment to revoke those contributions to the most recent House continuing resolution was a direct shot at vulnerable Senate Democrats up in 2014.”

“Because we’re right, simply because we’re right. We can recover from a political squabble, but we can never recover from Obamacare.”

— Rep. Steve King (R-IA), quoted by the New York Times, on shutting down the government.

“For almost three years, the story in the House has been about Speaker John Boehner’s restive right flank causing him problems. But Republican moderates have apparently had enough,” National Review reports.

“In what is by far their boldest stand since the GOP took control of the House in 2010, a group of them are threatening to bring down a vote on the rule for the government-funding bill scheduled for 6:30 p.m…. The group told leadership on Saturday they have 25 members who are willing to bring down the rule.”

Politico: “If no Democrats vote for the rule, Boehner can only lose 17 Republicans to sink the plan.”

Update: The “revolt” fizzled with only six Republicans voting against the rule.

Emerging from the House GOP conference, Rep. Don Young (R-AK) told National Journal that Republicans “don’t have the votes to do anything.”

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds the Republicans in Congress at greater risk of political damage in a government shutdown: 63% of Americans disapprove of their handling of the budget debate, 13 points worse than President Obama’s rating on the issue.