US govt shuts down in impasse

800,000 face furloughs; million more to work without pay.

Jonathan Weisman amp; Jeremy W Peters

A flurry of last-minute moves by the House,Senate and White House late Monday failed to break a bitter budget standoff over President Obamas healthcare law,setting in motion the first government shutdown in nearly two decades.

The impasse meant that 800,000 federal workers were to be furloughed and more than a million others would be asked to work without pay. The Office of Management and Budget issued orders shortly before the midnight deadline that agencies should now execute plans for an orderly shutdown due to the absence of appropriations because Congress had failed to act to keep the federal government financed.

After a series of rapid-fire back and forth legislative maneuvers,the House and Senate ended the day with no resolution,and the Senate halted business until later Tuesday while the House took steps to open talks. But Harry Reid,the Senate majority leader,dismissed as game-playing the House proposal to begin conference committee negotiations.

We will not go to conference with a gun to our heads, he said,demanding that the House accept the Senates six-week stopgap spending bill,which has no policy prescriptions,before negotiations begin.

The Obama administration and the Republican-controlled House had come close to failing to finance the government in the past but had always reached a last-minute agreement to head off a disruption in government services.

In the hours leading up to the deadline,House Republican leaders won approval,in a vote of 228 to 201,of a new plan to tie further government spending to a one-year delay in a requirement that individuals buy health insurance.

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But 57 minutes later,and with almost no debate,the Senate killed the House healthcare provisions and sent the stopgap spending bill right back,free of policy prescriptions. Earlier in the day,the Senate had taken less than 25 minutes to convene and dispose of a weekend budget proposal by the House Republicans.

You dont get to extract a ransom for doing your job, Obama said in the White House briefing room as the clock struck midnight.

Obama called House Speaker John A Boehner of Ohio,but they spoke for less than 10 minutes,without any sign of progress.

I talked to the president tonight, the speaker said on the House floor. He summed up Obamas remarks as: Im not going to negotiate. Im not going to negotiate.