Senate weighs new, painful leverage tactic as fears of another government shutdown grow

The Senate will soon decide whether lawmakers should be paid during another government shutdown as the specter of more closures looms large. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., teed up a vote on a measure that would prevent senators from being paid during a government shutdown, a political option of last resort that has now become commonplace in the midst of President Donald Trump’s second term. 

The resolution from Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., is straightforward: if there is another shutdown, he and his colleagues won’t get paid. It’s one of several resolutions and bills tossed around by lawmakers to find a way to stop shutdowns, or at least find a leverage point against them. 

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Thune quietly set up the resolution for a vote when the Senate returned on Monday as lawmakers gear up to fund immigration operations for the next three and a half years — a route they’re having to take as a result of the most recent shutdown.

When asked how he felt about his measure getting a shot, Kennedy said he pushed Thune to do it. 

“He did it, and I think he’s a fine American,” Kennedy said. 

Shutdowns have become a common tool over the last year and a half that Democrats have turned to as a negotiating counterpoint. In Trump’s second term alone, Congress has been on the precipice of a closure four times.

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And those shutdown run-ins have yielded the longest full shutdown in history, and the longest partial closure ever. 

That reality, where Democrats are using a shutdown like a political cudgel in a way lawmakers have never seen, has some Republicans worried that they’ll do it again before the midterm elections in November. 

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Democrats of being “legislative terrorists” who view political opportunity in forcing another closure.

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It could be over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) again, Schmitt said, or something else entirely. 

“It’ll be something else, and then we’ll just shut the whole thing down, and we should not, you know, let them do that,” Schmitt said. “So I think we ought to have some plans in place to account for that, to make it painful for them if they want to do that, because the American people suffer on it.”

Kennedy isn’t the only lawmaker trying to take the option off the table. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has been pushing his Shutdown Fairness Act, which would require that working federal workers are paid during a shutdown.

And Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., has his own legislation, the Prevent Government Shutdowns Act, which would automatically fund the government for two-week stretches until Congress landed on a compromise funding deal.

“We need to pass it so we never have a moment like this again,” Lankford told Fox News Digital. “We will have disagreements. It’s America, but we should not have federal workers, programs that stop because we’re having a disagreement. Let’s have the fight. But let’s keep going.”