The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved a resolution to withhold senators’ pay during government shutdowns that affect one or more Senate agencies, aiming to make federal closures financially costly for lawmakers, rather than solely for federal workers.
Under the measure, senators’ pay would be withheld by the secretary of the Senate whenever a shutdown affects one or more agencies, and the pay would resume after funding is restored. The resolution takes effect the day after the Nov. 3 general election and does not apply to the House.
The Senate vote comes amid frustration among lawmakers over shutdowns that have lasted longer and recurred more frequently during the past year. The Associated Press said the bipartisan support reflects an effort to discourage Congress from failing to complete routine legislative work.
In a floor speech on Wednesday, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., framed the effort as changing lawmakers’ incentives during shutdowns. “Shutting down government should not be our default solution to our refusal to work out our issues and our differences,” Kennedy said in the speech, according to the report. “This is about putting our money where our mouth is,” he added.
The resolution highlights the contrast between members’ pay protections and the impact of shutdowns on workers. The Associated Press report said two shutdowns in the past year created significant financial hardship for tens of thousands of federal employees, including those at the Department of Homeland Security. It also cited the DHS partial shutdown, which reopened last month after a 76-day lapse—described as the longest agency funding shutdown in history.
The reporting also pointed to a separate, broader federal government shutdown that lasted 43 days and ended last year’s longest closure on record. The report said federal law and the Constitution require lawmakers to be paid even when the government shuts down, even as federal employees miss paychecks.
The pay-forfeit debate has come up before. During the October full government shutdown, the report said Sen. Lindsey Graham proposed a constitutional amendment that would require members of Congress to forfeit their paychecks during closures. Graham said at the time that requiring members to forfeit pay would make shutdowns fewer and shorter.
The Associated Press report said Graham described his approach as the most “constitutionally sound” way to address the problem but said the process would be much more laborious because three-fourths of states would need to ratify an amendment. It also noted that lawmakers in previous shutdowns have often pledged to forgo their paychecks voluntarily, even as the Constitution’s baseline requirement has remained.
Kennedy told reporters Wednesday that his measure was intended to ensure “shared sacrifice” during shutdowns and that it did not go as far as he would like. Asked why it did not extend to the other chamber, Kennedy said, “the House’s business is the House’s business,” while also describing tensions between Senate and House members.
“There’s a very strong undercurrent of animosity among some of my friends in the House,” Kennedy said. “It’s quickly becoming like two kids fighting in the back of a minivan,” he added.