Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
The Senate voted 54-46 to table a House request for a conference committee on a funding resolution, the third time Democrats have voted down legislation from the lower chamber since Monday, The Hill reported.
"The government is closed," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said. "All over America, federal employees are getting furloughs this morning ... because of the irrationality that is going on in the other side [the House] of the Capitol."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of rooting for a shutdown all along.
"Democratic leaders in Congress finally have their prize -- a government shutdown that no one seems to want but them," McConnell said. "With just hours left to go Democrats voted again and again to reject reasonable legislation."
"They don't even want to talk about it."
House Republican leaders tried several tactics to defund or change implementation of the Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as Obamacare, in the government funding bill. Each attempt was rejected in the Senate.
Also Tuesday, the health insurance marketplaces, where individuals and small businesses can compare policies and buy insurance, went into effect despite the government shutdown.
Early Tuesday, the House passed a resolution asking for a formal conference between the House and Senate on the continuing resolution that would fund the federal government, The Hill said. Senate Democrats pledge to kill the motion because they did not want to negotiate with a "gun to our head," saying the House must first pass a "clean" short-term funding bill before there could be negotiations on a longer-term measure.
Moments after the shutdown deadline passed on Tuesday morning, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the House could send "100 other doodads and gizmos" but they would be rejected by the Senate until the House passed a clean continuing resolution.
Both sides dug in for the first government shutdown in 17 years. Now looming is the deadline for a debt-ceiling increase in mid-October.
House Republicans initially wanted to delay the entire healthcare law for a year, then voted to delay only the individual mandate and scrap subsidies in the law for members of Congress, their staff and political appointees.
The shutdown means 800,000 of the government's 2.9 million federal workers are furloughed and more than a million others have been asked to work without pay.
The Office of Management and Budget issued orders just before the midnight deadline for agencies to "execute plans for an orderly shutdown due to the absence of appropriations" from Congress.
As part of the orderly shutdown, many federal workers will report to their agencies for a half day of shutdown preparations before being sent home.
Essential functions such as law enforcement and air-traffic control continue, although tens of thousands of controllers, prison guards and Border Patrol agents are required to serve without pay.
National parks, monuments and museums, as well as most federal offices, are closed. Many federal activities, including Internal Revenue Service audits and flu-outbreak surveillance, have been suspended.
Numerous congressional hearings -- including one scheduled for Tuesday on last month's Washington Navy Yard shootings -- are postponed.
"Unfortunately, Congress has not fulfilled its responsibility. It has failed to pass a budget and, as a result, much of our government must now shut down until Congress funds it again," Obama told military and defense employees around the world in a video message.
Uniformed personnel remain on duty and will be paid, Obama said. "The threats to our national security have not changed, and we need you to be ready for any contingency."
