Government shutdown
The meeting
On Tuesday, President Obama held an Oval Office meeting with the following people in an unsuccessful effort to finalize a deal:
Vice President Joe Biden
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
The chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., and Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii
If a deal can't be struck by midnight tonight, what happens? Let's look at some examples of services affected in 1996 during a 21-day government shutdown.
Parks and museums
In the 1996 government shutdown:
368 National Park Service sites closed (loss of 7 million visitors)
Museums and monuments closed (loss of 2 million visitors)
Visas and passports
In the 1996 government shutdown:
About 20,000 foreign visa applications per day were not processed
200,000 U.S. passport applications were not processed; U.S. tourism and airlines suffered major losses
Military veterans
In the 1996 government shutdown:
Services to military veterans were curtailed
Federal contractors
In the 1996 government shutdown:
About $3.7 billion in Washington, D.C., area contracts were affected
Workers were furloughed without pay
Law enforcement
In the 1996 government shutdown:
Delays in processing alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives applications
Work on 3,500 bankruptcy cases was suspended
Recruitment of federal law enforcement officers stopped
Health
In the 1996 government shutdown:
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped disease surveillance
Toxic waste clean-up at 609 sites stopped; 2,400 Superfund workers were sent home
No new patients accepted for clinical research at National Institutes of Health
Source: Bing
