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WASHINGTON - The world won't end if a dysfunctional Washington can't find a way to pass a funding bill before this weekend.

That's the truth about a government "shutdown": The government doesn't shut down.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers will be forced off the job, and some services will go dark.

It's a crummy way to run a government, sure, but Social Security checks will still go out. Troops will remain at their posts. Doctors and hospitals will get their Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. In fact, virtually every essential government agency, like the FBI, the Border Patrol and the Coast Guard, will remain open. Transportation Security Administration officers will continue to man airport checkpoints.

But hundreds of thousands of federal workers will be forced off the job, and some services will go dark. Even after funding is restored, the political repercussions could be enduring.

Here's a look at past shutdowns and what will happen if Congress fails to pass a short-term spending bill by midnight Friday:
WHO WORKS AND WHO DOESN'T?
In the case of a shutdown, fewer than half of the 2 million civilian federal workers subject to it would be forced off the job if the Trump administration follows the rules followed by previous Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. That's not counting about 500,000 Postal Service employees or 1.3 million uniformed military personnel who would be exempt.

The rules for who works and who doesn't date back to the early 1980s and haven't been significantly modified since. The Trump administration is relying mostly on guidance left over from Obama.

The air traffic control system, food inspection, Medicare, veterans' health care and many other essential government programs would run as usual.

Under a precedent-setting memorandum by Reagan budget chief David Stockman, federal workers are exempted from furloughs if their jobs are national security-related or if they perform essential activities that "protect life and property."

The air traffic control system, food inspection, Medicare, veterans' health care and many other essential government programs would run as usual. The Social Security Administration would not only send out benefits but would continue to take applications - though replacements for lost Social Security cards would have to wait. The Postal Service, which is self-funded, would keep delivering the mail. The Federal Emergency Management Agency could continue to respond to last year's spate of disaster.

The Washington Monument would be closed, as would museums along the National Mall. In the past, national parks have been closed to visitors and campers, but the Interior Department says it is trying to make parks as accessible as possible despite bare bones staffing level, and is "prioritizing access to the most accessible and most iconic areas of parks and public lands."
DO FEDERAL WORKERS GET PAID?
While they can be kept on the job, federal workers can't get paid for days worked during a lapse in funding. In the past, however, they have been repaid retroactively even if they were ordered to stay home.

Rush hour in downtown Washington, meanwhile, becomes a breeze. Tens of thousands of federal workers are off the roads.
HOW OFTEN DID THIS HAPPEN IN THE PAST?

The last shutdown was a 16-day partial shuttering of the government in 2013.

Way back in the day, shutdowns usually weren't that big a deal. They happened every year when Jimmy Carter was president, averaging 11 days each. During Reagan's two terms, there were six shutdowns, typically just one or two days apiece. Deals got cut. Everybody moved on.

The last one was a 16-day partial shuttering of the government in 2013, which came as tea party conservatives, cheered on by outside groups like Heritage Action, demanded that language to block implementation of Obama's health care law be added to a must-do funding bill.
WHAT WERE THE POLITICAL REPERCUSSIONS?
In a 1995-96 political battle, Clinton bested Newt Gingrich and his band of budget-slashing conservatives, who were determined to use a shutdown to force Clinton to sign onto a balanced budget agreement. Republicans were saddled with the blame, but most Americans suffered relatively minor inconveniences like closed parks and delays in processing passport applications. The fight bolstered Clinton's popularity and he sailed to re-election that November.

In 2013, the tea party Republicans forced the shutdown over the better judgment of GOP leaders like then-Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Republicans tried to fund the government piecemeal - for example, by forcing through legislation to ensure military service members got paid. But a broader effort faltered, and Republicans eventually backed down and supported a round of budget talks led by Paul Ryan, R-Wis., then chairman of the House Budget Committee.

Now, as House speaker himself, Ryan is struggling to head off a shutdown on his watch. "I think cool heads, hopefully, will prevail on this thing," Ryan said Wednesday.
HOW MANY WORKERS WERE AFFECTED IN PAST SHUTDOWNS?
In 1995, 571,000 Defense Department civilian employees, some 69 percent, remained at their post, while 258,000 other Pentagon workers were furloughed. Eighty-five percent of Veterans Administration employees went to work, as did 70 percent of Transportation Department workers. The latest estimates from the Justice Department are that 83 percent of its employees, some 95,000 people, would be deemed essential and stay on the job.

The 2013 shutdown resulted in the furlough of 850,000 employees, which cost the government 6.6 million days of work and more than $2.5 billion in lost productivity and pay and benefits for employees.

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What happens during a government shutdown?

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WASHINGTON - The world won't end if a dysfunctional Washington can't find a way to pass a funding bill before this weekend. That's the truth about a government "shutdown": The government doesn't shut down. Hundreds of thousands of federal workers will be forced off the job, and some services will go dark.

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Here are some thoughts on today's three-week deal in Congress to reopen the government, take a vote on an unspecified immigration bill, and fund the Children's Health Insurance Program for six years:

1) There's a rollicking debate on Twitter over whether Democrats "caved." I'll confess that I'm mystified by this argument. For the moment, this seems like a good deal - but it's impossible to say anything definitive without knowing what happens over the next three weeks.

2) Consider what we don't know about what comes next. We don't know which immigration bill, or bills, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will bring to the Senate floor. We don't know if any immigration compromise passes the Senate. We don't know if an immigration bill that passes the Senate will get a vote in the House. Even if it does get a vote in the House, we don't know if it'll pass. And if it does pass, we don't know if Trump will sign it.

3) We also don't know what the implicit Democratic position is here. If Democrats get a fair vote in the House and Senate on an immigration deal and it doesn't pass, will they shut down the government again in three weeks? Put differently, is this a deal about a fair process or about a particular outcome? If Democrats don't get a deal and they shut the government back down in three weeks, it's hard to see what was lost here.

4) Democratic opponents of the deal believe that an extended shutdown increases the likelihood of a DREAMer compromise. But does it? That is to say that an extended shutdown will cause Trump so much political or personal pain that he will accept one of the immigration compromises he has thus far rejected. Neither dynamic is obvious to me.

5) Politically, Trump's entire brand is anti-immigration politics, and if there is round-the-clock news coverage of a shutdown over immigration, he'll think it's good for his base. Personally, Trump's goal in life is to be seen as a winner, and to double down when attacked or under pressure, and so it's hard to see how a high-stakes battle over a shutdown - which would make a deal on immigration look like a cave to reopen the government by Trump - helps.

6) Beyond that, shutting down the government should be a last resort in the most extreme situations (if that). And historically, shutting down the government usually doesn't end with the party that forced the shutdown getting the policy concessions it wants - it often strengthens the president's party. To the extent there's an open path in which an immigration deal can be negotiated and brought to a vote with the government still open, that's a good thing.

7) One counterargument: McConnell's word hasn't been worth much this year. Just ask Sens. Susan Collins (ME) and Jeff Flake (AZ), fellow Republicans who were promised health and immigration policies in return for their tax votes. In this case, though, if McConnell reneges on the deal, Democrats simply shut down the government in three weeks. They haven't lost that leverage.

8) And if Democrats do need to shut down the government in three weeks, they'll do so with the Children's Health Insurance Program funded for six years, rather than seeing it weaponized against them. That's a big deal, both substantively and politically.

9) There's a broader political dynamic worth considering here too. Republicans pioneered a brand of politics in which creating crises in government operations became proof of sincerity, regardless of whether it led to good outcomes or who got hurt along the way. If you didn't employ every tactic in service of your promises to the base, you were a liar - it wasn't acceptable to say, "We don't have the votes; we need to win more elections."

10) At the time, Democrats angrily criticized that approach, arguing that all-out tactical war would be terrible for the country, that some boundaries and norms were worth preserving, that elections were the proper method of resolution. Now I'm hearing a lot of the same arguments from Democrats: If they don't shut the government down, or keep it shut down, it will be a betrayal of their base.

11) Democrats also feel, understandably, that they can't unilaterally disarm. If Republicans are going to use the basic functioning of the government as leverage, then Democrats have to do so too.

12) The logic of that is inarguable, and the consequences disastrous. If hostage-taking becomes normalized in American politics, then there's really no end to the cycle of escalation, and it's going to finish with a global economic crisis because we breached the debt ceiling, or worse.

13) The central political problem in American life, for years now, has been that the Republican Party is a dysfunctional institution that has abandoned principles of decent governance in order to please an ever more extreme base. I don't have an answer for fixing that. But it would be doubly bad if their outrageous behavior drives Democrats to use the same tactics in response. American politics is, hopefully, an infinite game, not a finite game, and that means doing everything possible to steer away from retaliatory loops that clearly lead to the system crumbling.

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Here are some thoughts on today's three-week deal in Congress to reopen the government, take a vote on an unspecified immigration bill, and fund the Children's Health Insurance Program for six years: 1) There's a rollicking debate on Twitter over whether Democrats "caved." I'll confess that I'm mystified by this argument.

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2018's (and Trump's) first government shutdown began at midnight on January 20, 2018. It ended on January 22, 2018.
The first shutdown ever took place when President Ford was in office. It spanned from September 30 to October 11, 1976.

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It ends when the president and the congress come to an agreement or compromise. This past shut down ended with a 81 to 18 vote to end the shutdown.

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Nonessential companies are shut down as well, federal workers don't get paid during a shutdown.

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It could cost the country billions of dollars.
Democrats wanted to protect 700,000 people from deportation who have been covered by DACA for years now, the shutdown could slow the progress.

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Republicans passed a "stop-gap funding legislation" but they required at least 10 democrats to pass. Five said yes but there was also five republicans who said no.

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the process in which the executive branch goes through when the congress and president fail to "pass legislation funding government operations and agencies."