Senate Votes to Withhold Members' Pay During Government Shutdowns

The Vote

On May 14, 2026, the U.S. Senate voted 99-0 to adopt a resolution sponsored by Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) directing the Secretary of the Senate to withhold all salary payments to senators during any future government shutdown [1]. One senator, Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), was absent but signaled his support [2]. Kennedy framed the vote in stark terms: "Take your brain with you, because this is about shared sacrifice. This is about putting our money where our mouth is" [3].

The resolution does not require House passage or a presidential signature because it changes only the Senate's internal rules [2]. A parallel bill introduced by Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) in the House — which would carry the force of law and apply to both chambers — cleared the House Administration Committee 10-0 in March but has not received a floor vote [2].

What Triggered This

The Senate did not act in a vacuum. The federal government shut down on October 1, 2025, when Congress failed to pass any of the 12 annual appropriations bills. The closure lasted 43 days, making it the longest complete government shutdown in U.S. history [4]. Approximately 670,000 federal workers were furloughed and another 730,000 worked without pay [5]. The Congressional Budget Office estimated a permanent economic loss of roughly $11 billion [6].

A separate partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security lasted 75 days, affecting TSA agents, Coast Guard personnel, and border patrol officers [2]. Throughout both closures, every member of Congress continued to collect their $174,000 annual salary — roughly $3,346 per week — without interruption [7].

Source: Congressional Research Service / House History

Data as of May 14, 2026CSV

Since 1976, when the modern budget process took effect, there have been roughly 23 funding gaps leading to 13 actual shutdowns where government operations ceased [8]. Before the 1980s, agencies generally continued operating through funding gaps. That changed after Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti issued legal opinions in 1980 and 1981 establishing that federal agencies may not spend money without explicit congressional authorization [8].

The four longest shutdowns have all occurred in the last three decades: 21 days in 1995-96 under President Clinton over spending cuts; 16 days in 2013 under President Obama over the Affordable Care Act; 35 days in 2018-19 during President Trump's first term over border wall funding; and the 43-day closure in 2025 [8][4].

How the Pay Withholding Works

Under the Kennedy resolution, when a government shutdown begins, the Secretary of the Senate places each senator's paycheck into an escrow account. The money remains inaccessible for the duration of the shutdown. Once the government reopens, the withheld pay is released in full [1][3].

This structure was chosen to comply with the 27th Amendment to the Constitution, which states: "No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives shall take effect until an election of Representatives shall have intervened" [9]. The amendment, originally proposed by James Madison in 1789 but not ratified until 1992, prevents Congress from giving itself an immediate pay raise — or, by the same logic, an immediate pay cut.

The resolution takes effect on the date of the November 2026 midterm elections, satisfying the 27th Amendment's requirement that an election intervene before any change to congressional compensation [1][9]. This means it could apply to a potential end-of-year government shutdown in December 2026 but would not cover any shutdown occurring before the election.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) raised a procedural concern: a Senate resolution, unlike a statute, may lack legal enforceability. If a future Senate majority wanted to suspend or reverse the rule, it could do so by simple majority vote [2]. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) took a different approach, introducing a proposed constitutional amendment that would require members of Congress to permanently forfeit — not merely defer — their paychecks during shutdowns [10]. That proposal, which would need two-thirds approval in both chambers plus ratification by 38 states, has not advanced.

The Back-Pay Question

The central criticism of the Kennedy resolution is that withheld pay is returned once the shutdown ends. Senators do not forfeit anything; they experience a temporary delay in payment. For a senator with millions in savings or investment income, a delayed paycheck may be imperceptible.

This stands in contrast to the experience of federal workers. Although the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 guarantees back pay for furloughed federal employees after shutdowns [11], workers still face real-time financial hardship. During the 2025 shutdown, federal employees collectively missed an estimated $14 billion in wages before back pay was eventually disbursed [5]. Federal contractors — who employ hundreds of thousands of people supporting government operations — receive no back-pay guarantee at all [11].

Congress vs. the Workers It Furloughs

A rank-and-file member of Congress earns $174,000 per year, a figure frozen since 2009 [12]. The average federal employee salary across all General Schedule grades is approximately $97,456 [13]. But that average masks wide variation. A GS-7 employee — a common entry-level professional grade — earns roughly $46,696 at Step 1. A GS-12, a mid-career professional, starts at $76,990 [13].

Source: CRS / OPM

Data as of May 14, 2026CSV

During the 35-day shutdown of 2018-2019, about 380,000 workers were furloughed and 420,000 worked without pay [11]. For a GS-7 employee earning under $47,000 a year, missing even two paychecks can mean choosing between rent and groceries. A senator earning $174,000 — with a median net worth of $4.4 million — faces no comparable pressure [14].

If a senator's pay were withheld for a 43-day shutdown (the length of the 2025 closure), the amount would be roughly $20,500. For a senator with the median net worth of $4.4 million, that represents about 0.47% of their wealth. For a GS-7 employee with a net worth closer to the U.S. median household figure of $193,000, missing the same period's pay ($5,500) represents approximately 2.8% of their net worth — and unlike the senator, that money is not sitting in escrow waiting to be returned [14][13].

The Millionaire's Senate

The financial profile of the Senate makes the pay-withholding mechanism look especially modest. According to an analysis by Notus based on financial disclosure filings, at least 73 of the 100 sitting senators have a median estimated net worth exceeding $1 million [14]. The median net worth in the Senate is approximately $4.4 million — roughly 70 times the Census-reported median U.S. household net worth [14].

Source: Notus / OpenSecrets

Data as of May 14, 2026CSV

The wealth gap runs across party lines, though it skews higher among Republicans: the median Republican senator's net worth is approximately $5.7 million, compared to $2.9 million for Democrats [14]. At the extreme end, Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) has an estimated net worth of $1.3 billion, while the median household income in his state is about $18,000 [14].

Ethics advocate Aaron Scherb told Notus: "When you have predominantly multimillionaires making policy decisions for over 300 million Americans, those policy debates are distorted by the fact that decision-makers are extremely wealthy individuals" [14].

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) pushed back against the premise of the pay-withholding approach altogether, calling it a "gimmick" and saying it was "not feasible" for him to forgo his paycheck — an acknowledgment that the measure's bite falls unevenly even within the Senate itself [15].

Do Perverse Incentives Lurk Behind the Reform?

Supporters argue the resolution creates "skin in the game" for lawmakers. But political scientists and budget analysts have raised a less intuitive concern: tying legislative pay to budget outcomes could create pressure to accept bad deals rather than hold firm on substantive policy disagreements.

Government shutdowns often occur because one faction in Congress — or the president — insists on policy conditions that the other side considers unacceptable. The 2013 shutdown was driven by Republican efforts to defund the Affordable Care Act. The 2018-19 shutdown centered on border wall funding. The 2025 shutdown involved disputes over spending levels across multiple agencies [8][4].

If senators face even a symbolic financial penalty for prolonged shutdowns, the incentive structure shifts: members may feel pressure to capitulate to demands they would otherwise resist on principle. This could advantage whichever party is more willing to trigger a shutdown as a negotiating tactic, since the other side faces both public blame and personal financial inconvenience for holding out [15].

No senator voted against the resolution, making it difficult to identify specific objections raised on the floor. But the unanimity itself may reflect the political reality that voting against docking your own pay is a near-impossible position to defend publicly, regardless of the policy merits.

The California Experiment

The most relevant precedent for "no budget, no pay" comes from California. In 2010, voters passed Proposition 25, which included two major changes: it lowered the vote threshold for passing a state budget from two-thirds to a simple majority, and it required legislators to forfeit their daily pay for every day the budget was late past the June 15 constitutional deadline [16].

The results have been striking on the surface. In the 30 years before Proposition 25, California passed its budget on time only 10 times [16]. Since the measure took effect, the legislature has met the June 15 deadline every year.

But the picture is more complicated. The on-time budgets have sometimes been criticized as incomplete or out of balance — technically meeting the deadline while deferring hard decisions to later negotiations [16]. In 2020, the legislature passed a version that was "admittedly out of balance by many billions of dollars," with legislators arguing it still complied with Proposition 25's terms [16]. Critics note that the simple-majority vote change may have done more to enable on-time passage than the pay penalty.

New York has a similar provision suspending legislative pay when the budget is late, and legislation has been introduced to eliminate the back-pay loophole [17]. North Carolina has considered its own version [17]. Utah avoids the problem altogether by passing a baseline budget at the start of each session [17].

Who Actually Enforces This?

The Kennedy resolution assigns enforcement to the Secretary of the Senate, a nonpartisan officer elected by the Senate itself. This raises a structural question: the enforcer answers to the same body whose pay is being withheld. While the Secretary's office has a long tradition of institutional independence, there is no external check if enforcement falters.

Because the resolution is an internal Senate rule rather than a statute, it cannot bind the House. Even if the Steil bill passes the House, the two chambers would need to reconcile their approaches. And because the Senate can change its own rules by majority vote at any time, a future Senate could simply repeal the pay-withholding provision before a shutdown begins [2].

The 27th Amendment provides an additional layer of complexity. Legal scholars have debated whether temporary escrow — where pay is delayed but ultimately delivered in full — constitutes "varying the compensation" of members within the amendment's meaning. The Kennedy resolution's architects clearly believe it does not, since the text explicitly references the 27th Amendment and directs the Secretary to release all escrowed funds to avoid a constitutional violation [9][1]. But this interpretation has not been tested in court, and some constitutional law scholars argue that any mechanism linking pay to legislative outcomes raises 27th Amendment concerns [9][10].

What Comes Next

The Senate has acted. The House has not. Rep. Steil's bill sits in legislative limbo. Even if both chambers eventually adopt some form of pay withholding, the fundamental question remains: can a body of millionaires meaningfully discipline itself with a temporary pay delay?

The 2025 shutdown cost the U.S. economy an estimated $11 billion and left hundreds of thousands of federal workers scrambling to pay bills [6][5]. The Senate's response — a unanimous vote to temporarily defer its own paychecks — may reflect genuine accountability. Or it may be the kind of cost-free gesture that lets elected officials claim sacrifice without experiencing any.

The answer will come the next time Congress fails to fund the government. If the resolution is in effect and a shutdown occurs, the question will be whether delayed paychecks motivate faster negotiations — or whether senators simply wait out the closure, collect their back pay, and move on.