More than 700,000 Federal workers in the United States are beginning their day with no jobs to go to after Republicans and Democrats in Congress failed to agree a new budget.

The shut down is the first in seventeen years. A report from Washington says many employees in the US capital were arriving their offices to clear their desks.

Now the shut down has begun. One office which is open for business is the US Congress which will continue its deliberations to try and come up with the spending plan to end the shut down.

But Republicans in the House of Representatives say they will only pass the budget if President Obama's flagship Healthcare reforms are delayed by a year. Something Democrats would not accept.

Another report from Washington says the immediate impact of the US shut down is very much domestic. There may be international concerns of side effects of the shut down starts to hit the US economy significantly. There have been bubbles in the international financial markets in the run up to the shut down.

A much greater looming concern for the international economy is the approaching deadline for agreement on raising the US debt ceiling.

The US Senate today voted to kill Republicans' latest attempts to modify an emergency government funding bill, just hours after federal agencies, national parks and programs began shutting down.

The Senate voted 54-46 to table the request from the House of Representatives to start formal negotiations to end the impasse and make changes to President Barack Obama's health care law, including a year delay to a requirement that individuals acquire health insurance.