The protracted United States government shutdown, now deep into its fourth week, escalated on Thursday, October 23, 2025, after Senate Democrats blocked a Republican-led bill aimed at providing back pay and on-time paychecks for essential federal employees.
The decision of the Senate Democrats to block the bill means that millions of service members, air traffic controllers, Border Patrol agents, and other essential federal workers will miss their first full paycheck this week.
Pan-Atlantic Kompass reports that the bill, introduced by Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), sought to compensate federal employees and military personnel during the current shutdown and also extend relief to future instances where funding bills aren’t in effect.
“For fiscal year 2026, and any fiscal year thereafter, there are appropriated such sums as are necessary to provide standard rates of pay, allowances, pay differentials, benefits, and other payments regularly to excepted employees,” the bill reads.
Johnson had pitched his bill as a long-term solution.
“I just hope, on a nonpartisan basis, we do something that makes sense around here for once,” Johnson said ahead of the bill’s consideration.
“With Democrats continuing the Schumer Shutdown, they should at least agree to pay all the federal employees who are forced to continue working. The 2025 Shutdown Fairness Act is a permanent fix that will ensure excepted workers and our troops are paid during a shutdown,” Johnson said.
The bill needs 60 votes to advance. However, the Senate Democrats blocked the bill. It failed with a 54-45 tally, despite support from three moderate Democrats who crossed the aisle.
Only three Democrats, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Raphael Warnock, and Jon Ossoff of Georgia, voted with Republicans.
However, Republican lawmakers decried the decision of the Senate Democrats to block the bill.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) expressed bewilderment on the floor, questioning how lawmakers could vote against ensuring that people forced to work during the crisis receive compensation.
Also, Senator John Cornyn, R-Texas, who spoke on the floor of the house after Senate Democrats blocked the bill said: “It means Democrats don’t care. We know this is going to end sometime. The question is when. I guess it will depend on how much carnage the Democrats want to create. To me, they are in a box canyon, and they can’t figure out how to get out.”
Recall that federal employees have been asked to continue working since the government entered a shutdown on Oct. 1 after lawmakers failed to pass spending legislation to begin the 2026 fiscal year.
Republicans have advanced a short-term spending extension that would open the government through Nov. 21. Democrats have repeatedly rejected that proposal though, demanding that Congress first consider an extension to expiring COVID-19-era supplemental funding for Obamacare health insurance subsidies.
Ahead of Thursday’s vote, Republicans in the House of Representatives appeared open to considering the Johnson-Young bill.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told House Republicans during a lawmaker-only call on Tuesday that his chamber would be “prepared to act” if the bill passed the Senate.
Also, Johnson has repeatedly said he would give lawmakers 48 hours’ notice to return to Washington before any votes but has largely signaled he will keep the House out of session until Senate Democrats pass the GOP’s funding bill.
Johnson also said on the call that he was skeptical the bill would get enough Senate Democratic support to pass.
“If they oppose the Ron Johnson bill in the Senate, it will be absolutely clear that they are simply using the military and air traffic control and law enforcement and all these other personnel as pawns for their political efforts,” Johnson said.
