WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Trash could pile up in the streets of the capital, the Statue of Liberty will close and astronauts will stay home if the U.S. Congress fails to reach a budget deal and the government shuts down.

Government services that are deemed as nonessential run out of funding at midnight on Friday without an agreement between Republicans and Democrats on spending for the rest of the fiscal year.

If lawmakers cannot break the logjam, some 800,000 employees will be sent home without pay when federal agencies close indefinitely.

The famed Yosemite National Park in California will be off limits to new visitors from Saturday, but will give tourists already in hotels and campgrounds until Monday to pack up and leave. Also closed to visitors will be the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor, a popular monument run by the National Park Service.

"There are thousands of people depending on this," said Commerce Department employee Trish Lister, who did not know if she would be furloughed. "I'm not worried for myself but I am disgusted by the children in Congress, particularly the Tea Party," she said.

With a midnight deadline looming, the White House and Congress scrambled to break the budget impasse.

Republicans, encouraged by the fiscally conservative Tea Party movement, pushed for deep cuts in the spending bill. They say the government needs to slim down to close the budget deficit of $1.4 trillion. President Barack Obama's Democrats say cuts that are too steep would hinder economic recovery.

A shutdown could be felt thousands of miles (km) away by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Military personnel will keep working but their paychecks would be delayed if a shutdown lasted past Tuesday.

"They will get paid but it's a disruptive thing when you've got young military families trying to make ends meet, sometimes living from paycheck to paycheck," Republican Senator Jon Kyl said.

The Pentagon warned it would not be able to pay death benefits to families of troops killed in the line of duty: a $100,000 payment used to cover funeral costs and household expenses once paychecks stop coming.

Basic visa services at U.S. embassies would be "severely curtailed" by a shutdown, the State Department said

Some astronauts, but not those in training for space station missions or active-duty military officers, would be affected by the shutdown.

"The astronaut corps, at large, will be furloughed," said Nicole Cloutier-Lemasters, spokeswoman at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Those remaining active and on duty would be about one-third of the 61-member astronaut corps.

WASHINGTON TRASH

Downtown Washington will be a lot quieter next week if there is a shutdown. Government agencies and prime tourist sites like the Smithsonian Institution museums will close.

Unlike other U.S. cities, the capital, whose government is overseen by the U.S. Congress, is prohibited from spending local dollars in the event of a federal budget impasse. It will not collect trash for the first week of a shutdown, and parking meters will not be routinely monitored, although police can still give tickets for illegal parking.

A group of Washington residents threatened to dump their garbage at House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner's basement apartment in the city in the event of a shutdown.

They warned of a protest on Saturday morning against the Republican lawmaker in a Facebook site named, "If Boehner shuts down the government I am taking my trash to his house."

Federal workers would be the worst affected. Unlike soldiers, they might never be reimbursed for the workdays they lose, although some agencies are expected to eventually pay federal employees who have to stay away from work.

Forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers said a weeklong shutdown would cut roughly 0.2 of a percentage point from second-quarter U.S. economic growth.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that voters would be split over who is to blame if the government does shut down. Thirty-seven percent would blame Republicans in Congress, 20 percent would blame Democrats and 20 percent would blame Obama. Seventeen percent would hold all of them responsible.

Unlike the last two shutdowns, both of which occurred in the 1990s, this one would take place during tax preparation and filing season. That would delay tax refunds to Americans who filed a paper -- rather than electronic -- tax return, which covers about 30 percent of the total number of returns.

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart and Arshad Mohammed in Washington, Irene Klotz in Cape Canaveral and Daniel Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Peter Cooney)

CHICAGO (Reuters) – The agency overseeing Wisconsin elections will not certify results of Tuesday's state Supreme Court race until it concludes a probe into how a county clerk misplaced and then found some 14,000 votes that upended the contest.

Michael Haas, Government Accountability Board staff attorney, told Reuters on Friday the watchdog agency was looking into vote tabulation errors in Republican-leaning Waukesha County which gave the conservative incumbent a net gain of more than 7,000 votes -- a lead his union-backed challenger seems unlikely to surmount.

"We're going to do a review of the procedures and the records in Waukesha before we certify the statewide results," Haas said.

"It's not that we necessarily expect to find anything criminal. But we want to make sure the public has confidence in the results,"

Unofficial returns in the statewide race had given the challenger, JoAnne Kloppenburg, a narrow 204 vote statewide lead over David Prosser, a former Republican legislator.

But late Thursday, the top vote counter in Waukesha County said votes she had failed to report in earlier totals resulted in a net gain of 7,582 votes for Prosser in the county.

News of the uncounted votes came as officials throughout Wisconsin were conducting county canvasses, a final review of voting records that allows the state to certify this week's bitterly contested elections.

The Supreme Court contest was widely seen as a referendum on Republican Governor Scott Walker and the curbs on collective bargaining he and his allies passed in the legislature.

Walker has defended the union restrictions, which eliminate most bargaining rights for public sector workers and require them to pay more for benefits, as a needed fiscal reform to help the state close a budget gap.

Critics saw the bill, which also eliminates automatic deduction of union dues, as a Republican attack on the single biggest source of funding for the Democratic Party.

Earlier this year the struggle over the issue made Wisconsin a focal point of a national debate over labor relations, with massive protests at the state capital and protracted maneuvering in the state legislature.

Several states are considering proposals similar to Wisconsin, and union supporters fear the laws curbing collective bargaining could spread across the country.

If Prosser wins, Kloppenburg has the right to ask for a recount -- though based on the current tally, Wisconsin law may require she pay for it herself.

In a statement, Kloppenburg said her campaign had filed an open records requests "for all relevant documentation related to the reporting of election results in Waukesha County, as well as to the discovery and reporting of the errors announced by the County."

Under Wisconsin law, county clerks have until next Friday, April 15, to complete the canvass and report the results to the GAB.

Once results from all 72 counties are in, a three-day period begins for candidates to request a recount.

If there are no delays connected to a recount, the board's deadline for certifying the results is May 15.

(Editing by Jerry Norton)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A looming government shutdown would be felt thousands of miles away by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and there could be a high political cost for the lawmakers who let it happen.

Soldiers will not get their paychecks for the duration of the shutdown, leaving their families at home struggling to pay the bills.

Some relatives are already furious.

"Thanks for sending my husband to war and not paying him in return," the wife of one soldier exclaimed on a website, fearing delayed pay in the case of a shutdown.

The sharp reaction among military families underscores the political dangers for Republicans and Democrats if they fail to reach agreement on funding the government for the remainder of fiscal 2011 by midnight on Friday.

It also shows how U.S. troops have become a lightning-rod issue in the bitter budget battle in Washington.

Americans may be able to stomach most other fallout from the threatened government shutdown, like closed national parks or museums. But delaying paychecks to troops after nearly a decade of war likely would trigger a visceral response among voters, looking ahead to the 2012 presidential elections.

Many Americans know members of the military, and often count them in their families. There are about 2.2 million active duty, National Guard and reserve members of the armed forces.

CHEERS AND BOOS

Republicans and Democrats were desperate on Thursday to shift the blame for any fallout on troops.

Democrats slammed Republicans for rejecting a measure that would have funded troops while negotiations continued.

"Republicans said no," said Nadeam Elshami, a spokesman for House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

Republicans in the House passed a stop-gap spending measure that would have, among other things, ensured continued funding for the Pentagon. But President Barack Obama has said he would veto it because it also included $12 billion in additional federal spending cuts.

"If you vote against this bill, you are voting against the troops who are engaged in three wars," said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers to a chorus of cheers and boos.

Democrats pushed back. The White House warned that failure to reach a deal would likely delay troops' pay, a message that Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered to troops personally in Iraq on Thursday.

Gates told a U.S. soldier in Iraq that the degree of delay would depend on the length of the shutdown.

Soldiers are usually paid twice a month. If the shutdown begins on April 8, he said, soldiers' initial paychecks would be halved. If the shutdown lasted until April 30, they would miss an entire check. They would only be repaid later.

"I hope this thing doesn't happen, because I know it will be an inconvenience for a lot of troops," Gates said.

ANGRY REACTION

Many U.S. troops live paycheck to paycheck, with the average junior enlisted member -- typically with just a high school degree -- drawing a salary of about $43,000 per year.

The online comment section of Stars and Stripes, the leading Defense Department news publication, was full of angry reaction.

"My wife is back home working and all alone. I am not there to protect her and tell her everything is going to be OK," said one service member deployed abroad.

"There are half a million troops deployed to some ragged country who depend on their paycheck. Taking that away will turn our military upside down," wrote one service member in Afghanistan on the Stars and Stripes website.

Another service member stationed in Germany with his family fretted over the impact.

"Thanks a lot Uncle Sam; you're now the black sheep in the military family," he wrote.

(Additional reporting by Missy Ryan in Baghdad, Thomas Ferraro, Andy Sullivan and Alister Bull in Washington, editing by Xavier Briand)