No. of Recommendations: 3
Lastly, there's the wild card in the White House. The President-elect will be clamoring to put this all off until Jan 21 so that he can be the one to claim the glory for getting the shutdown ended. (It will almost certainly be framed as the "Biden" shutdown even though it had nothing to do with Biden.)
I would think he'd want it resolved before then. The shutdown would step on his inaugural festivities - if not directly (is all that event planning performed by "essential" personnel?), then indirectly by closing a lot of things that guests and visitors would want to do while in DC.
Plus, Trump seems to want to go fast. I don't know if that's because he realizes he's a lame duck, or is aware that the GOP's hairs-breadth majority in the House is likely to go away in 2026, or just because that's his preference - but either way, if the House and Senate are tied up in knots over funding the government during the first few weeks of his Administration, he loses time.