Government Shutdown: What's at stake
By Charles Riley, staff reporterFebruary 21, 2011: 3:01 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The countdown to a possible government shutdown is on.
If lawmakers don't pass a funding extension by March 4, the government will shift to performing essential operations only. That could mean that government workers would stay home, national parks and museums would close and cleanup at toxic waste sites would stop.
It's difficult to predict how the current government would respond to a shutdown, because each federal agency is responsible for crafting and updating its own "shutdown plan."
Those plans are not made public. But the past offers some clues.
The last time the federal government went dark was for five days in November 1995 and another 21 days, ending in January 1996, during the Clinton administration.
As a result, the government closed 368 National Park Service sites, along with national museums and monuments, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
