Image: Chris Nicholls/ALM; Adobe Stock
Reps. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., and Scott Peters, D-Calif., introduced bipartisan legislation Wednesday to prevent members of Congress from being paid until the government shutdown ends.
The legislation, the No Budget, No Pay Act, prevents "Congress from being paid unless it does its job and passes a budget and all 12 appropriations bills on time," the lawmakers said in a statement. "While the federal government is currently shutdown, dysfunction in Washington, DC is not new. Since the last major overhaul of federal budgeting and spending laws in 1974, Congress has only passed a budget resolution and all the accompanying spending bills on time once."
Getting through budgets "is our primary focus, what we're supposed to be coming in for, especially in the House," Huizenga said Thursday at the Security Traders Association's Market Structure Conference in Washington. "The constitution lays out that we are the keepers of the purse strings; all spending bills have to start in the House of Representatives — it should be, if not the primary function that we have, it should be certainly one of the primary functions."
The shutdown reached day 16 Thursday. The longest government shutdown to date ended in January 2019 after 35 days.
The bill states that Congress may not receive pay after Oct. 1 of any fiscal year in which Congress has not approved a concurrent resolution on the budget and passed the regular appropriations bills. The bill also prevents back pay.
A New Record?
How do we get out of the shutdown?
The House "has done our job in that we've passed a CR, a clean continuing resolution ... The question is how do you get to 60 votes in the Senate," Huizenga said at the STA event. "Are there going to be enough Democrat senators from some purple states that might go red, they might go blue, that they finally say, 'Look, I've had enough of this, I'm joining and we're going to get this government open.'"
The other scenario: "There's some type of extension to the COVID subsidy that was added to the ACA [Affordable Care Act] — I've heard everything from one year to three years. That has been proposed."
The House "has officially not been going into session," Huizenga said at the STA event, and "the Senate has continued to do its appointments and some other things."
The House will have to get back "at some point soon," Huizenga continued. "But some of my Senate colleagues are talking about this being the longest shutdown in history."
Credit: Chris Nicholls/ALM; Adobe Stock
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