The US Congress is up to Tuesday to pass a law that will maintain the smooth functioning of the federal government or cause partial shutdown.

Congress must provide funding to 438 government agencies before October 1, the start of the financial year. However, legislators rarely adhere to this deadline and usually vote on temporary expenditure bills so that the government can continue to operate until they complete their work. If they let funding expire, government agencies must stop all work that is not considered ‘necessary.

Democrats and Republicans usually disagree about spending and it is not uncommon for the negotiations to continue until funding is going to expire, Reuters notes.

These tensions have intensified under the chair of Donald Trump. Since his duties, he has dismantled several government agencies, oversees the departure of hundreds of thousands of civil servants and refused to spend billions of dollars approved by Congress. Trump’s colleagues from the Republican Party have welcomed these moves, although they undermine Congress’s power on budgetary matters, while the Democrats have not been able to stop him.

Republicans control both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but it will take at least seven Democratic votes in the Senate of the 100 seats to pass the expenditure legislation.

In the case of shutdown employees who are considered necessary, they will remain in their work, though they will not be paid. In the past, federal employees were paid retroactively for the time when they did not work.

Operating holidays that last only a few days have a little practical effect, especially if they occur during a weekend, but the wider economy could be damaged if federal employees start losing their salaries after two weeks.

The 2018-2019 shutdown cost about $ 3 billion in the economy, an amount equivalent to 0.02% of GDP, according to the Congress Budget Office.

This time, a prolonged shutdown would create greater turmoil, as Trump’s trade wars and federal bank battles have already caused uncertainty in the world economy.

What functions are considered necessary

Each ministry and service has an emergency plan to determine which employees must continue to work without pay.

The 2018-2019 shutdown made some 800,000 out of the 2.2 million federal government officials.

During the 2018-2019 Shutdown, the Trump government kept 63 national parks open, although public toilets and information offices were closed and the garbage collection had been interrupted.