Federal Shutdown In America

What is it? Why is it imposed? Is it the first time? How long? Who is affected?

Before going into the actual scenario let us first understand the structure of the US government. The Constitution of the United States divides the federal government into three branches to ensure that no individual gains more control. It is thus divided into:

Legislative - make laws(Congress- includes the Senate and the House of Representatives)
Executive - carry out laws(President, vice-president, cabinet)
Judicial - evaluate laws(all courts)

Each branch of government can change acts of the other branches as follows:
1)The President can veto laws passed by Congress.
2)Congress confirms or rejects the President's appointments and can even remove the President from office in exceptional circumstances.

3)The Justices of the Supreme Court, who can overturn unconstitutional laws, are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

The shutdown occurs if the spending bills are not passed by Congress. And it is now a partial shutdown because 75% of government funding has already been approved for the budget year that started in October and it includes money for the military which is unaffected during a shutdown. The rest 25% of government spending is stopped and 9 out of 15 federal departments are affected. During this period the federal workers are mandated to work without pay and others are furloughed, granted leave to go back to their hometown.

This is not first of its kind. There have been 21 federal government shutdowns with varied disagreements from abortion to Obamacare. This time it is due to disagreement between Trump and Democrats on allocating funds for a security 'wall' on US Southern border. The president requested 5.7 US billion dollars to be allocated to new spending federal legislation which Democrats vehemently opposed. So the shutdown is implemented the following day.

Trump wanted to set up a wall to secure the southernborder from irregular immigration from Mexico. However, Democrats agreed to allocate 1.6 US billion dollars, which includes 1.3 US billion dollars for setting up a wall and 300 million dollars for border security items.

Democrats often blame Trump by referring this shutdown as "Trump shutdown".

Today(Thursday, 10-Jan-2019), marks the 20^th day since the shutdown and it is second longest. Hope it will resolve soon.

P.S: Constructive criticism is always welcomed.