Democrats blocked the Shutdown Fairness Act of 2025, sponsored by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), in a mostly party-line 54-45 vote. It needed 60 votes to advance.
The legislation would pay service members as well as employees who are determined by agency heads to be “excepted” from the shutdown or who are “performing emergency work.”
Johnson’s bill also would have guaranteed pay for federal workers who are on duty throughout the shutdown, including air traffic controllers, Transportation Security Administration agents, park rangers, federal law enforcement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) blasted the Republican bill as a “ruse” that would give White House budget director Russell Vought broad authority to pick and choose which federal departments and agencies to reopen and which to keep closed.
“It’s nothing more than another tool for Trump to hurt federal workers and American families and to keep this shutdown going for as long as he wants,” Schumer said on the floor. “We will not give Donald Trump a license to play politics with people’s livelihoods. That’s why we oppose this.”
Johnson accused Democrats of mischaracterizing his bill, asserting that federal law states clearly what federal employees are essential during a shutdown.
The vote was the latest effort by Republicans to force Democrats to take tough votes during during the shutdown, which has dragged for 23 days.
The administration will need to figure out where to pull additional funds from if it wants its forces to be paid, should Congress fail to come up with a solution in time.
Trump on Oct. 11 directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to pay service members’ mid-month paychecks by using $8 billion in previously appropriated Pentagon funds meant for research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E).
But that pay cycle cost roughly $6.5 billion, leaving only $1.5 billion leftover for the looming Oct. 31 payday, expected to cost $6 billion to $7 billion, according to Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
“My understanding is that the initial money pulled from the RDT&E account was only sufficient to cover the Oct 15th payroll,” he told The Hill.
Read the full report at thehill.com.
