For the first time in 17 years, the US government has partially shut down after a midnight deadline passed without an agreement on measures to continue funding basic services.
Despite a last-gasp appeal by President Barack Obama,Federal agencies were ordered to begin closing at midnight on Tuesday [0400 GMT], meaning that over 800,000 US government workers have been forced to stay at home with no guarantee of back pay once the deadlock is over.
According to reports, the Republican-led House of Representatives attempted to draw up a replacement that blocks parts of President Barack Obama's health care reforms on Monday.
The House has passed two spending bills in recent days, both of which have been torpedoed by the Democratic-led Senate. the Democratic-led Senate voted 54-46 against a bill from House Republicans that would have funded the government only if President Obama's healthcare law - dubbed Obamacare - was delayed for a year.
The House asked for a conference on the budget with the Senate. However, the Senate's Democratic majority leader, Harry Reid, said it would reject the proposal, and called on the House to pass a budget law not linked to healthcare.
"The idea of putting the American people's hard-earned progress at risk is the height of irresponsibility, and it doesn't have to happen", President Obama had said on national television that Monday.
The national parks and Washington's Smithsonian museums will close; pension and veterans' benefit cheques will be delayed, and visa and passport applications will go unprocessed with the shutdown in place.
It could affect government services including food assistance for children and pregnant women and federal home loan programmes.
"The Americans don't want a shutdown and neither do I", Republican speaker of the House, John Boehner, responded a few hours later on the House floor, adding that the new health care law was having "a devastating impact... something has to be done".
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