If the sun goes down on the National Park System this weekend with a government shutdown, President Trump says it will be Democrats' fault/NPS

President Trump, eyeing a possible stalemate over the federal government's budget, said Thursday that if the government shuts down and national parks close it will be the fault of Democrats.

As families prepare for summer vacations in our National Parks - Democrats threaten to close them and shut down the government. Terrible!

That was the message the president "tweeted" Thursday morning as the Republican-controlled Congress was trying to reach a compromise to keep the government funded past Friday night, when the current continuing resolution passed earlier this year to pay the bills runs out.

Just a day earlier news reports out of Washington, D.C., had concerns over a stalemate receding with negotiations proceeding favorably. Congressional leaders were saying they might need to pass another continuing resolution for perhaps a week to conclude the negotiations, but there were no concerns of a government shutdown coming from the Capitol.

The last shutdown was in October 2013, when House Republicans refused to adopt a budget unless the Affordable Care Act was repealed. The Senate, then controlled by Democrats, passed several resolutions to extend government operations with no similar conditions. The shutdown lasted from October 1-October 16, when the House dropped its demands.

The face of the 2013 closure, if you will, in many instances was the National Park Service, as river trips and weddings were canceled and vacations interrupted. Some states, such as Colorado and Utah, determined not to lose the economic infusion parks generate, received Interior Department approval to pay for continued park operations.

The president's tweet ran contrary to what Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has said about a government shutdown. During a trip to Kings Canyon National Park earlier this month he said the National Park System would remain open in the event of a shutdown.

On Wednesday, more than 5,000 former National Park Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees sent a letter to President Trump and Congressional leaders asking them to avoid a shutdown.

"While numerous valuable programs and people would be negatively impacted by a shut down, we are particularly concerned about the impact on our national parks, national wildlife refuges, national fish hatcheries, resource conservation areas, national forests, and other special lands and waters where people visit and recreate," the letter read.

"Past government shut downs have clearly impacted the conservation and management of the historical, cultural, and natural resources protected on these lands, and the neighboring communities. The already reduced numbers of employees working to properly manage these areas are personally and professionally impacted, as are their families," it continued. "More importantly, past shut downs have been documented to have cost billions of dollars to local communities whose citizens and businesses are dependent on the tens of millions of visitors, recreationists, hunters and fishermen that were kept from using these public parks, refuges, monuments, hatcheries, forests, campgrounds, access points and visitor centers."