Resolution--Shared Sacrifice on Government Shutdowns

Senate votes unanimously to withhold members' pay during future government shutdowns

The United States Senate passed a resolution Thursday by unanimous consent to dock senators' pay during any future government shutdown, a move that came only after two record-setting funding lapses left federal workers scrambling and Americans fuming at a Congress that kept cashing its own checks.

The measure, sponsored by Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy, advanced Wednesday with a 99-0 vote before final adoption the following day. Under the resolution, senators' salaries will be held in escrow whenever a shutdown affects one or more federal agencies. The money gets released only after funding is restored.

It is a narrow fix to a broad problem. But for the first time, senators will face at least a taste of the financial disruption they have inflicted on millions of government employees through repeated failures to fund the agencies they oversee.

Kennedy, speaking on the Senate floor, did not mince words. As the Daily Mail reported, the Louisiana senator laid out the record bluntly:

"We ought to hide our heads in a bag. It's got to stop. Shutting down government, it should not be our default solution to our refusal to work out our issues and our differences."

"This is about shared sacrifice. If senators are going to vote to shut down the government and prevent millions of federal workers from getting paid, they ought to have the same skin in the game."

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It was Democrats who shut down the government twice...Last year, the majority of the federal government was shut down for 43 days. Then, just three months after that crisis ended, the Department of Homeland Security lost its funding for 76 days. Ridiculous.