federal budget

After Congress failed to compromise by a midnight deadline on Monday the federal government has started to go into shutdown mode at offices in New Jersey and across the country.

Congress plunged the nation into a partial government shutdown Tuesday as a long-running dispute over President Barack Obama's health care law stalled a temporary funding bill, forcing about 800,000 federal workers off the job and suspending most non-essential federal programs and services.

President Barack Obama is ramping up pressure on Republicans to avoid a post-midnight government shutdown. He says a shutdown would hurt the economy and hundreds of thousands of government workers.

The Democratic-led Senate has rejected conditions that House Republicans attached to a temporary spending bill.

Just ten hours before a threatened government shutdown, the Senate convenes this afternoon -- but leaders have made it clear that senators aren't going to accept Republican demands that a spending measure be linked with a one-year delay in implementing the rest of President Barack Obama's health care law.

The stock market is down sharply in early trading as the U.S. federal government appears headed for a partial shutdown.

The threat of a government shutdown lingers as Congress continues to fight over the federal budget, which is moving markets lower.

The online registration launch is set for Tuesday for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare.