So here we are, a month into another partisan stalemate that has effectively brought Congress and much of the federal government to a grinding halt. 

From the beginning, both parties were eager to set this up as a test of wills designed to score political points and force the other party to capitulate. No great principles are involved, or for that matter no policy differences that couldn’t be resolved in a day of good-faith negotiation.

Like just about everything else in Washington these days, it’s all about winning, not governing.

Now that the shutdown threatens to disrupt lives other than those of federal employees, there are reports of various ideas to break the stalemate: A meeting between President Donald Trump and Democratic leaders. Talks between the Senate Republican leader and a gang of pragmatic Democrats. A short-term funding patch to test whether Republicans are serious about making a deal on expiring health insurance subsidies. A longer funding patch that extends well into the new year. 

The solution you haven’t heard is the most obvious and straightforward: Keep both houses in session all day, every day, until all of those full-year bipartisan funding bills are passed — with no pay for members until they do. 

It tells you how far expectations have fallen that even suggesting it — suggesting that members put aside the partisan gamesmanship and actually do the jobs they’ve been elected to do — sounds preposterously naïve.  

There is certainly plenty of blame to go around for all this. 

Democrats can hardly be faulted for not trusting Republicans to make good on promises of negotiations over health insurance just as soon as the government reopens. Democrats tried to raise the issue for months before the shutdown and got only a stiff arm — particularly in the House, where they are now totally shut out of the appropriations process.

And given that Republicans voted in lock step to support Trump’s refusal to spend appropriated funds in the manner Congress intended, it should be hardly surprising that Democrats now demand statutory assurances that future appropriations won’t be ignored. 

For their part, Republicans have good reason to suspect that if Democrats show they can leverage a government shutdown to restore health insurance subsidies, they will do it again when the next funding patch runs out, and the one after that.  After all, that kind of leveraging the situation is what Republicans did when they were in the minority.

Many people, including many members, have come to believe that given the polarized nature of American politics, these stalemates are inevitable because, absent some crisis, there just aren’t enough votes for bipartisan compromise. 

This is the central fallacy that drives the logic of congressional failure.

In fact, there would be plenty of support among members for reasonable bipartisan compromise if only party leaders would give them the political headroom to craft them and vote for them. The reason leaders don’t is because doing so would diminish their own power and undermine the party unity they’ve convinced themselves is crucial to winning the majority in the next election.

Imagine, for example, that after Labor Day a bipartisan gang from both chambers proposed that instead of letting Obamacare premium subsidies expire this year, they would be reduced gradually, by 10 percent in each of the next five years, but only for households with incomes above 200 percent of poverty ($65,000 for family of four). 

Premiums for lower-income households would remain the same. And imagine that some anti-fraud provisions were thrown in to address Republican concerns, along with language addressing Democratic concerns about requiring the president to spend all the money that is appropriated.

Given the unpleasant alternative, such a compromise could easily overcome a Senate filibuster and narrowly pass in the House if members were not bullied and browbeaten to vote against it.

Both parties could claim victory while still allowing plenty of their members to vote against it, whether out of conviction or political necessity.

More significantly, it’s hard to imagine that a politician worthy of the moniker could not successfully defend voting to prevent a government shutdown, reduce spending, prevent financial hardship for middle- and working-class families, keep airports operating and reaffirm Congress’ constitutional prerogatives.

But none of that happened.

There was no bipartisan gang in the House while the one in the Senate fizzled, largely because no Republican dared to participate without a permission slip from Trump.

There was no well-vetted compromise because the committee staffs with the expertise to work out the details were not available to renegades aiming to circumvent the committees. And there was no vote on any bipartisan compromise because the party leaders would never allow it, lest it divide moderates and hardliners in their own caucus. 

Ultimately, the blame for all this lies with the members themselves — all 535 of them — who over the years have surrendered their individual power, initiative and independent judgment and succumbed to the siren call of party unity. 

And it will be solved only when a small, determined group of members from both parties are willing to trust each other enough to craft the bipartisan compromises most voters say they want and use their votes to force them onto the legislative calendar.

That doesn’t guarantee they will prevail. But it would begin to open up what has become a cramped and undemocratic process by offering politically credible alternatives to the hardline positions now enforced by their party leaders, caucus colleagues and base voters. 

The Problem Solvers, the Majority Democrats, the Republican Governance Group — members of these House caucuses and their counterparts in the Senate talk a good game about wanting to revive the vital center and restore Congress as an effective governing institution.

It’s time for them to put up or shut up.

The way things are going, next year will be too late. 

Steven Pearlstein is director of the Fixing Congress Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a longtime writer and columnist for The Washington Post. He is also Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University. The views expressed here are his own.