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US vice-president JD Vance warned the US government was “headed to a shutdown” this week, after Donald Trump and congressional leaders failed to strike a deal in a crunch meeting at the White House.

Speaking to reporters after the Oval Office meeting on Monday afternoon, Vance accused Democrats of holding the government “hostage”.

“You don’t put a gun to the American people’s head and say, unless you do exactly what Senate and House Democrats want you to do, we are going to shut down your government,” the vice-president said. “I think we are headed to a shutdown because the Democrats won’t do the right thing.”

Trump and Vance met Republican Senate majority leader John Thune, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and his House counterpart Hakeem Jeffries with less than two days to go until the government is set to run out of funding.

The congressional leaders will need to hammer out an agreement by the end of Tuesday to avoid a government shutdown beginning at 12:01am on Wednesday.

Republican lawmakers have called for a short-term agreement, or a continuing resolution, that would keep the government funded at current levels until November 21.

Democrats have so far refused to endorse the Republican resolution, arguing any agreement needs to include an extension to health insurance subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year.

A shutdown would result in the closure of public services and furloughs for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

But the two sides appeared far apart after what Jeffries described as a “frank and direct discussion” on Monday.

“Democrats are fighting to protect the healthcare of the American people, and we are not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the healthcare of everyday Americans, period full stop,” Jeffries said.

Schumer sought to place the blame for any shutdown on the president and Republicans.

“It is up to the Republicans whether they want to shut down or not. We made to the president some proposals . . . ultimately [Trump] is the decision maker,” Schumer said.

Republicans control the upper chamber of Congress by a 53-47 margin. However, any funding deal will need the support of at least 60 senators, or a minimum of seven Democrats, in order to satisfy the Senate’s so-called filibuster rules.

Earlier on Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that Trump had “leverage” and was not interested in a compromise.

“The leverage is in the president’s hands because the overwhelming majority of the American public wants to keep the government open,” Leavitt said.

Her comments came after Trump told CBS News in a phone interview late Sunday: “I just don’t know how we are going to solve this issue.”

The last government shutdown was in 2018, during Trump’s first term, amid a dispute over the president’s demands for federal funding to build a wall on the US-Mexico border. It was the longest shutdown on record, spanning 35 days and stretching into early 2019.

Historically, non-essential government workers have been furloughed during government shutdowns and return to work when funding is restored. But the White House last week suggested that a shutdown could create an opportunity for widespread firing of government workers.

In a memo circulated late on Wednesday, the Office for Management and Budget told federal agencies to “use this opportunity to consider reduction in force” or permanent lay-offs.