Should members of Congress stop getting paid during a government shutdown?

David Lightman, The Sacramento Bee on Nov 24, 2025

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress could continue getting paid for their time during the 43-day federal shutdown that ended earlier this month. Now there’s a strong effort to make sure that doesn’t happen if the government is shuttered again.

“It’s time that Congress set an example,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who is leading the effort to restrict members’ pay during shutdowns. The salary could be deferred until a shutdown ended.

His bid is facing an unpredictable path. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said that while “I have to take a look at the bill, I may have some constitutional concerns.”

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said, “I want to think about it,” while emphasizing he did not take his pay during the shutdown.

Those and other concerns were enough to scuttle a planned Senate Rules and Administration Committee consideration of Kennedy’s bill last week.

The meeting was postponed until next month. “I pulled it down because a couple of members said they’ll vote for it but they wanted to make some changes,” Kennedy said. He would not elaborate.

Nor would Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the committee. His office would not respond to a question about where the senator stood on the bill.

The issue has been a sensitive one since the shutdown began Oct. 1. Most members of Congress make $174,000 a year. Many, including Schiff, were quick to say they would defer taking their salaries until the shutdown ended.

Is support for deferring Congress’ pay growing?

There appears to be strong support to find a way to have congressional salaries deferred during a shutdown. The 43-day shuttering that ended earlier this month was the longest in U.S. history, and the agreement that ended it funds most of the government only through Jan. 30.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., deferred his pay, saying that most federal workers were not paid and Congress should follow the example.

“That only makes sense that we should as well, especially when it’s members of congress themselves who are responsible for this by not actually passing a timely funding bill,” he said.

Kennedy and others tried to get Congress to bar the payments during the shutdown, but met consistent resistance.

“There are much better ways to get Congress to budget well for the American people,” Kurt Couchman, senior fellow in fiscal policy at Americans for Prosperity, a conservative research group, said of the legislation to defer congressional pay.

He noted that until the Carter administration in 1980, when a legal opinion from Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti established the basis for government shuttering, there had not been a shutdown in U.S. history.

Since then, they’ve almost been commonplace, as there have been shutdowns almost routinely. During President Donald Trump’s first term, the government was shuttered for 35 days, a record that stood until this fall.

Roadblocks ahead

What’s needed, Couchman said, is a more logical budget process that would not lead to government closings.

He and others cite the Constitution as the biggest potential obstacle to passing a law regarding members’ pay.

Article I, Section 6 says lawmakers “shall receive a Compensation fort their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.”

The 27th Amendment bars Congress from passing any law regarding its pay during a member’s term.

The Kennedy bill, Couchman said, “is inconsistent with both” provisions.

Another concern is that the priority should be paying all the federal workers who do show up to work.

“I think it is unfair, and I think it is wrong that we don’t pay the workers that show up,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., during a debate on the pay topic recently. “A better way than isolating different groups and punishing different groups is actually to pay those who are working.”

One of Kennedy’s ideas has been to put the deferred payments in escrow until the shutdown ends. Most federal employees who were not paid during the shutdown got back pay in recent days.

_____