What Has Congress Actually Done During The Shutdown?

The government remaining shut down for over a month has still not stopped the Senate from going about its business.

Congress is poised to break the record for the longest shutdown in U.S. history on Tuesday night, after Senate Democrats blocked a bipartisan GOP-backed clean spending bill to reopen the government 13 times in a row. During the 34-day standoff, the Senate has confirmed a slew of presidential nominees and passed legislation on defense spending and tariff legality.

The House, meanwhile, has not taken a vote since Sept. 19, the day it passed the clean spending measure.

One week into the shutdown, on Oct. 7, the Senate confirmed 107 executive branch nominees at once, following a rule change by the chamber’s Republican leadership to allow “en bloc” confirmation in some cases. Going into the shutdown, the Senate’s schedule was clogged with an unprecedented backlog of nominees awaiting confirmation.

The Senate also confirmed Hung Cao as under secretary of the Navy and nine judges during the shutdown, according