Among the affects of a federal shutdown: delays in processing passport and visa applications, issuing gun permits, continuing U.S. bankruptcy court cases and approving mortgage applications. 
 
 In this Nov. 15, 1995, file photo, a U.S. Park Service police officer stands in front of closed signs at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, during a partial shutdown of the federal government. (Photo: AP file photo) Story Highlights If budget deal is not worked out, federal government will shut down after midnight Monday 
 
 Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid payments would continue during a shutdown 
 
 About 41 percent of nondefense federal employees would be furloughed 
 
 WASHINGTON – If Democrats and Republicans don't reach a spending deal by midnight Monday, a partial government shutdown will take effect. 
 
 The 2013 fiscal year ends at midnight Monday. Many federal programs and activities will stop beginning Tuesday and won't restart until a new deal is in place. 
 
 Here's a guide to understanding how Congress got to this stage and how a shutdown would affect you. 
 
 Question: Will the entire government come to a standstill if a deal isn't reached? 
 
 Answer: No. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other "entitlement" programs that are funded automatically will escape the worst effects. But government agencies that rely on yearly congressional appropriations will be hit a lot harder. That includes giant agencies such as the Pentagon and smaller ones such as the National Park Service. 
 
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 Federal agencies have prepared plans to continue programs they deem critical to maintaining public safety and protecting property despite the shutdown. Employees who perform those critical functions will continue to work and get paid. 
 
 For instance, air traffic controllers and firefighters contracted by the National Forest Service would continue to work, but park rangers and researchers who conduct clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health would be furloughed. 
 
 USA TODAY estimates that about 41 percent of nondefense federal employees will be furloughed, but the remaining 59 percent will continue working. 
 
 Q: Will I still get my mail? 
 
 A: Yes. The U.S. Postal Service isn't funded by taxpayers. Independently financed agencies like the Postal Service won't be affected. 
 
 Q: How did Congress get in this situation? 
 
 A: In a word, partisanship. Differences between Democrats and Republicans are deepening over virtually every issue, and federal spending is the biggest one of all. 
 
 A temporary spending measure -- a continuing resolution, or CR -- approved by the GOP-controlled House on Sept. 20 would have kept the government running until mid-December but would have cut funding to implement the Affordable Care Act. 
 
 The Democratic-majority Senate rejected that plan, designed to gut President Barack Obama's signature health care law. On Friday the Senate approved its own CR that included money for the law known as "Obamacare." 
 
 House leaders are meeting over the weekend to consider their next move. If the House modifies the Senate CR as Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has promised, then the Senate has to approve the amended version before it reaches the White House. 
 
 It's unclear if and when those legislative steps will be fulfilled. Short answer: Things remain in limbo. 
 
 Q: What will be the impact of a shutdown? 
 
 A: All national parks and federal wildlife refuges would be closed for the duration of the shutdown, the Interior Department said Friday. About 9 million visitors were turned away from parks, museums and monuments run by the National Park Service in the mid-1990s, the last time the government shut down temporarily. 
 
 About 40 percent of the nation's 2 million federal workers would be furloughed. Though Congress has approved restoring lost pay retroactively in the past, there's no guarantee lawmakers will do that this time. 
 
 About 1.4 million active-duty military personnel must remain on the job but won't get paid until a new deal is signed into law. Active National Guard units also must continue to work. Most civilian employees of the Defense Department face furloughs. 
 
 Some other possibilities: Delays in processing tens of thousands of passport and visa applications, issuing gun permits, continuing U.S. bankruptcy court cases and approving mortgage applications. 
 
 Many congressional and White House staffers also may have to stay home. But members of Congress and the president are exempt from furloughs 
 
 Q: Has the government been shut down in the past? 
 
 A: Yes. The last one lasted 21 days from Dec. 15, 1995, to Jan. 6, 1996, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. It came soon after a five-day shutdown that lasted from Nov. 13-19, 1995. A disagreement over tax cuts between then-President Bill Clinton and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., precipitated those shutdowns. 
 
 Since 1976, there have been 17 shutdowns, though before the 1980s the government continued operating at reduced levels without furloughing workers. 
 
 Q: Isn't there going to be another showdown over raising the debt limit? 
 
 A: That's highly likely. Republicans, particularly ultraconservative tea party members, argue the debt ceiling shouldn't be raised unless Congress makes sizable spending cuts. 
 
 Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has said the government will run out of money around Oct. 17. In addition to using tax revenues, the Obama administration has to borrow more money to pay bills the nation has already racked up. But Congress has to raise the debt limit to allow increased borrowing -- and that permission won't come without another fight. 
 
 If the debt ceiling isn't raised, the U.S. economy will suffer even more that under a shutdown, Obama said Friday. For instance, interest rates on credit cards, student loans and mortgages loans could rise. And the nation's creditworthiness -- and global influence -- would take a beating, experts say, though critics dismiss such talk as hyperbole. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/19IaFCl ||||| “The planning itself is disruptive,” an exhausted Hale told reporters. “People are worrying right now about whether their paychecks are going to be delayed, rather than focusing fully on their mission.” 
 
 Shutdown planning has eaten up “probably thousands of hours in employee time better spent on supporting national security,” Hale said. 
 
 The tempo was similar at just about every federal agency this week, with managers racing from planning meetings to town hall gatherings with their employees. 
 
 Hundreds of thousands of employees who got word Friday that their jobs would not be essential prepared to turn in their government-issued BlackBerrys and 
 
 iPhones on Tuesday morning, while colleagues who must still report to the office wondered how their agencies would carry out their missions. 
 
 In the Defense Department, about 400,000 civilians will have to stay home if Congress does not pass a bill to keep the government open, Hale said. 
 
 Preparing for even a partial closure is a unique challenge for the Defense Department, which has a global reach that includes about 200 schools, 250 commissaries, and 700 hospitals and clinics. The department’s mission is singular within the federal government. The Pentagon must continue to support its combat operations in Afghanistan and deployments in many corners of the world. 
 
 In his Office of Public Affairs on Friday, Army Col. Steve Warren was coming to grips with the reality facing his staff. 
 
 “I’ve got no essentials in here, and I’m concerned,” Warren said, as CNN reported on his flat-screen television about the latest developments on Capitol Hill. 
 
 Half the press staff is active- 
 
 duty military and the other half civilians, a common mix throughout the agency. The uniformed officers must come to work in a shutdown. 
 
 Warren was worrying about manning hundreds of Pentagon Web sites and Twitter and Facebook, which get information to the public. “Guess who runs most of them?” he said. “Civilians who are not essential.” 
 
 Some Defense Web sites are run by contractors who will probably be working, since their funding has been approved. But if the federal workers supervising them are furloughed, the contractors may not be able to work. ||||| WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner dismissed any immediate path to ending the government shutdown Sunday, prolonging Washington’s political impasse as the nation heads toward the greater threat of defaulting on its debts for the first time in history. 
 
 In his first nationally televised interview since the shutdown began Tuesday, Boehner dug in his heels and said he has no plans to fund the federal government without winning concessions on President Obama’s health care law, or raising the debt ceiling before an Oct. 17 deadline without reducing spending. 
 
 “We are not going to pass a clean debt limit increase,” Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said on ABC’s “This Week.’’ “We are not going down that path.” 
 
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 Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew accused Congress of “playing with fire.’’ Reopening the government and paying the nation’s bills are not matters that should have to be negotiated, he said. 
 
 The comments from both sides made it clear that America’s political leaders have no clear plan for ending the stalemate. 
 
 Boehner’s hard line Sunday appeared to contradict media reports last week that he had privately indicated a willingness to seek a vote by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans to prevent default, even if it means crossing the Tea Party wing of his caucus. At least 20 mainstream conservative Republicans have said they are willing to join with Democrats to pass a “clean” resolution to raise the debt, without spending cuts or other conditions. 
 
 For the time being, at least, Boehner presented a united GOP front and said there is no change in strategy or a move toward a deal. 
 
 “There may be a backroom somewhere but there’s nobody in it,” Boehner said. 
 
 Boehner blamed Obama for not being willing to negotiate terms of a debt-ceiling increase. Asked directly whether he expects the country to default, Boehner responded, “It’s the path we’re on.” 
 
 “His [Obama’s] refusal to negotiate is putting this country at risk.’’ Boehner said. “I am not going to raise the debt limit without a serious conversation about dealing with problems that are driving the debt up.” 
 
 Lew, also appearing on the Sunday news circuit, called the current impasse “very dangerous” and “reckless” because it jeopardizes the government’s ability to make Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, disability and veterans payments on time once the country reaches its borrowing limit. 
 
 “If they don’t extend the debt limit, we have a very, very short window of time before those scenarios start to be played out,” Lew said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” 
 
 If the country runs out of its ability to borrow and is short on cash, Lew said, “It will mean that the United States, for the first time since 1789, would be not paying its bills, hurting the full faith and credit, because of a political decision.” 
 
 Lew blamed the shutdown on the GOP’s Tea Party faction, which he called “an extreme group trying to say we’re willing to do real damage if we don’t get our way.” 
 
 In a positive development for federal workers, the Pentagon said Saturday that it would be bringing hundreds of thousands of civilian employees back to work this week after they were furloughed last week, a move that should relieve some of the economic hardship on communities with a large military presence. The original furlough sent 800,000 employees home; the Department of Defense has 350,000 of those workers, most of whom would be brought back. 
 
 The partisan intransigence also broke briefly during a rare Saturday session when the House voted unanimously to restore pay to the 800,000 furloughed federal employees once the shutdown ends. 
 
 The 407-to-0 vote followed a series of piecemeal budget measures last week in which Republicans attempted to selectively restore funding to high-profile federal programs such as the National Institutes of Health, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, national parks and memorials, and a nutrition program for low-income women and children. 
 
 Representative Steve King, an Iowa Tea Party Republican, said Sunday that the House Republican strategy is to continue floating individual bills to fund the government — all except the health law. 
 
 “We will march down that line a piece at a time, opening up as many pieces of government as we can,” King said on CNN. “The lid is on the pressure cooker. The clamps are down and the pressure gets turned up every day.” 
 
 The Democratic-controlled Senate has said it would reject such partial measures, and Obama has promised a veto. 
 
 Boehner dismissed criticism among Democrats, and even some Republicans, that he has ceded control of the GOP agenda in Congress to Senator Ted Cruz, the Tea Party Republican from Texas who spearheaded the fight against the president’s health care plan, by allowing the government to shut down. 
 
 “I thought the fight would be over the debt ceiling. But you know, working with my members, they decided, well, let’s do it now,” Boehner said. “The fact is, this fight was going to come, one way or the other.” 
 
 Cruz said Sunday that the debt ceiling fight is the best leverage Congress has to achieve its goals of weakening the health care plan. He told CNN that any debt-ceiling deal needs to include a “significant” plan to reduce government spending, avoid new taxes and “mitigate the harms from” the president’s health care law. 
 
 Cruz brushed off any notion of a “cooling off” period during which Congress passes a clean spending bill and increases the debt limit for six weeks, enabling both sides to negotiate. 
 
 Obama urged Boehner to put a “clean” bill — stripped of any language about the health law, his signature domestic achievement — up for a vote, believing there are enough votes to both immediately reopen the government and raise the debt limit in order to prevent the United States from being a “deadbeat” on its obligations. 
 
 “The only thing that’s preventing that from happening is Speaker Boehner calling the vote,” Obama told the Associated Press. 
 
 But Boehner said Obama is the one who is putting the nation’s credit at risk. Boehner said he decided to stay in Washington for the weekend in light of Obama canceling his trip to Asia, expecting the two sides to sit down and begin hashing out a deal. 
 
 “He knows what my phone number is, all he has to do is call,” Boehner said. “I’m ready to talk. I’ve been ready to talk,” he said. “I’m a reasonable guy.” 
 
 Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said Democrats will negotiate but only “without a gun to our head.” He said despite Boehner’s claims to the contrary, the brinkmanship can end this week only if Boehner allows a “clean” vote.
– John Boehner planned a strategy session later today with House Republican leaders to plot their next move, but the prospects of avoiding a government shutdown before Monday's midnight deadline are getting bleaker by the hour, reports Politico. For one thing, no negotiations between Republicans and Democrats are even on the horizon, because both sides feel they've already staked out their positions. The Hill also thinks a shutdown is "increasingly likely," and USA Today has rolled out a primer on what it would mean to ordinary citizens: Yes, you'll get your mail, and neither Medicare, Social Security, nor Medicaid will be affected. But scores of other federal programs and activities will come to a halt: Forget visiting a national park or museum, and expect delays in everything from passport applications to gun permits to mortgage approvals. USA Today estimates that 40% of non-defense federal workers will be furloughed during the shutdown, and the Washington Post has details on how the Pentagon is scrambling to prepare. In short, it's a logistical mess, with about 400,000 civilian employees told they'd have to stay home unless a deal is reached. “The planning itself is disruptive,” says the Defense Department's comptroller. “People are worrying right now about whether their paychecks are going to be delayed, rather than focusing fully on their mission.”