Senate Democrats and Republicans may finally agree on one thing after months of bitter budget fights: lawmakers should not get paid when the government shuts down.
According to Fox News, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced he will support a Republican-led resolution that would block senators from receiving paychecks during future shutdowns, giving unexpected bipartisan momentum to the proposal ahead of a planned vote this week.
“I’m going to vote for it,” Schumer said. “And I think it has a lot of support.”
The measure was introduced by Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy and would direct the Secretary of the Senate to withhold senators’ salaries until a government shutdown ends.
Regular senators currently earn $174,000 annually, while party leaders can make more than $193,000 a year.
The proposal applies only to the Senate and would not take effect until after the November midterm elections.
Some Republicans have expressed concern that Democrats could still force another shutdown before the measure takes effect. Still, the resolution appears likely to pass with backing from both Schumer and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
The debate comes as lawmakers continue to deal with the fallout from repeated shutdown battles in recent years.
The most recent partial government shutdown stretched 76 days, becoming the longest in U.S. history. Democrats had pushed for major immigration reforms during the standoff.
Another shutdown last year lasted 43 days after Democrats sought an extension of Obamacare tax credits that later expired.
Republicans have since been working through the budget reconciliation process to address spending issues left unresolved during those shutdown fights and to secure funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol operations for the next several years.
Thune argued Republicans were forced into that process because Democrats refused to support funding for those agencies during earlier negotiations.
“And if this — passing this and applying it to senators, maybe it will provide an additional incentive to prevent Senate Democrats in the future from shutting the government down again,” Thune said.
The resolution now heads toward a Senate vote with rare bipartisan support, even as partisan tensions over federal spending continue to simmer in Washington.
