In the meantime, dozens of federally-funded departments and programs are closing, furloughing roughly 800,000 of 2.1 million federal civilian employees. The EPA and most national parks and museums have closed, and 94 percent of the Department of Education’s staff won’t be coming to work until Congress reaches a resolution.

All of MSU’s federally-funded work study programs already have been paid for, along with a majority of federal student loans, MSU spokesman Jason Cody said in an email.

But the long-term impacts of the shutdown on the university still are unclear, Cody said.

During a press conference, Michigan Budget Director John Nixon discussed university programs that could be affected.

“The financial aid should be on solid footing for the time being,” Nixon said, “but it could impact the research grants.”

MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon said in Tuesday’s Steering Committee meeting that if the shutdown lasts longer than 30 days, the government might stop paying for certain graduate students’ fellowship grants as well.

Services the government deems essential — including Social Security and Medicaid funding, national security operations, public health and safety programs, entitlement programs and the U.S. Postal Service — will continue during the shutdown, at least for the time being.

About nine-hundred National Guard employees in Michigan were furloughed Tuesday, and public school lunch programs, heating assistance for low-income families and food-stamp programs could be in danger of losing funding if the shutdown lasts longer than 30 days, potentially impacting millions of Michigan residents, Nixon said.

The state also will lose an estimated $18 million a day of federal funding, which could hurt an already sluggish economy if the shutdown continues for an extended period of time.

Government shutdowns have happened in the past, but most have been resolved over a weekend, excluding a longer-term shutdown that lasted 26 days during the winter of 1995-1996.

Historically, budget disagreements have been over the amount of money to spend on certain programs and were typically resolved with a simple compromise, political science professor Matt Grossmann said.

But, party lines are hardening, he said.

“It’s worse than zero sum,” Grossmann said. “One of the parties has to go back on what they had planned so far.”

With the debt ceiling debate looming on the horizon, politicians don’t want to give the impression they’re giving in, or it could lead to future issues.