Harry Reid: No talks on budget impasse until House reopens government WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- No budget-impasse congressional talks will happen until the House reopens the U.S. government with a stopgap funding measure, the top Senate Democrat said. "We like to resolve issues, but we will not go to conference with a gun to our head," Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said as the House, Senate and White House failed to break a bitter budget standoff over President Obama's healthcare law. The standoff, at the end of the fiscal year, shut down the government at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday for the first time in nearly two decades. Reid dismissed as game-playing a proposal by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to begin conference committee negotiations between leaders of both chambers. Reid said he would enter no negotiations until the House agreed to reopen the government by extending the government's funding for a few months without limiting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as "Obamacare." 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, Obama said. The threats to our national security have not changed, and we need you to be ready for any contingency. The White House and lawmakers in both parties agreed on one thing -- the shutdown was the other side's fault.