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The Senate failed on Thursday to pass legislation that would keep federal workers deemed essential and troops paid throughout the ongoing government shutdown, which stretched into its 23rd day with no end in sight.
The upper chamber held a vote on Republican senator Ron Johnson’s “shutdown fairness act”, which would guarantee pay for certain federal employees even when government funding lapses.
“With Democrats continuing the Schumer shutdown, they should at least agree to pay all the federal employees that are forced to continue working,” Johnson said when he introduced the bill last week.
But Democrats opposed the legislation, arguing that it would just give Donald Trump more power by letting the president choose which employees receive pay.
“The bill, the Republican bill, is a ruse. 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, the Democratic Senate minority leader, said.
The bill did not receive the 60 votes necessary to advance, with only three Democratic senators – John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and the Georgia senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff – breaking with their party to support it.
Congress has been paralyzed since the start of the month, after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach an agreement on extending government funding beyond the end of September. The ensuing shutdown has led to an estimated 700,000 federal workers being furloughed, while hundreds of thousands of others are working without pay.
Last week, Donald Trump authorized the defense department to pay US military personnel, using funds meant for research and development. Budget experts who spoke to the Guardian have described the move as likely illegal.
The Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has kept his chamber out of session since 19 September, in a bid to pass a Republican-backed government funding bill that cleared the House along near party lines.
Democrats have rejected the measure, which would extend funding through 21 November, and instead demanded that Republicans extend subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plans that are set to expire at the end of the year. They also want curbs on Trump’s use of rescissions to slash funding that Congress has approved, and the reversal of cuts to the Medicaid program for poor and disabled Americans.
The Senate’s Republican leader, John Thune, has said he is willing to negotiate over the Affordable Care Act subsidies, but only once the government reopens. He has held 12 votes on the Republican spending bill, which has yet to receive enough Democratic support to advance.
On Thursday, Democratic senators debuted two counterproposals to pay federal workers. The “military and federal employee protection act” proposed by Michigan’s Gary Peters would provide a one-time payment to federal workers from the start of October to the date the bill is enacted.
The “true shutdown fairness act”, proposed by Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, would pay all federal workers during a shutdown, whether they are furloughed or required to continue working.
Neither received a vote in the Senate.
Fetterman, whose state broke for Trump last November, released a video after the Senate vote in which he urged his fellow Democrats to change their approach.
“Reopen this government and have an earnest conversation about extending those tax credits,” he said, standing alongside Dave McCormick, a Republican who is Pennsylvania’s junior senator.
