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 to the Senate record.

Another step taken by the Senate during the shutdown was the passage of its annual defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The NDAA for Fiscal Year 2026 strengthened readiness in the Indo-Pacific and issues sweeping changes to how the Department of War conducts business, according to Federal News Network. The Senate passed the NDAA, which came in $32 billion over White House projections, in a 77-20 vote on Oct. 9.

The Senate also homed in on President Donald Trump’s declarations of national emergencies to justify his tariffs. The upper chamber in late October passed bipartisan resolutions ending the emergencies underpinning Trump’s reciprocal global tariffs, as well as his tariffs on Canada and Brazil.

The president’s emergency measures had levied 10% tariffs globally,  25% tariffs on Canada, and 40% tariffs on Brazil.

Trump had declared emergencies regarding trade imbalances globally, narco-trafficking in Canada, and political censorship in Brazil, to justify his tariffs.

Three joint resolutions dismantling regulatory restrictions on energy, mining, and public‐lands development also saw passage in the Senate in October during the shutdown. The resolutions targeted land‐use rules by the Bureau of Land Management in Montana, North Dakota, and Alaska.

Several ultimately unsuccessful measures also came to a vote in the Senate during the last month, most notably a failed resolution seeking to restrict Trump’s strikes on alleged narcotics traffickers in the Caribbean, a rejected Department of War spending bill, and failed legislation seeking to limit Trump’s domestic national guard deployments.