Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., turns to an aide during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, June 3, 2025. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
In addition to compensating federal employees and military personnel during the current shutdown, the bill would 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 on a regular basis to excepted employees," the bill reads.
SENATE STALLS ON SHUTDOWN VOTE AMID WARNING FURLOUGHED WORKERS MAY LOSE PAY
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 that 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.
Other Republicans blasted Democrats for voting against the bill.
"It means Democrats don't care," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said. "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."
Essential 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.
Republicans, who maintain that the health insurance subsidies are unrelated to the government’s short-term funding needs, have rejected those demands out of hand.
Democrats in the Senate have voted 12 times to defeat the stopgap bill.
JOHNSON WARNS US 'BARRELING TOWARD ONE OF THE LONGEST SHUTDOWNS' IN HISTORY
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., holds a press conference on the 14th day of the government shutdown on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 14, 2025. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)
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Senate Democrats also defeated other pieces of legislation that would open portions of the government. Last week, Democrats in the Senate voted against a 2026 defense spending bill — one of the 12 year-long bills normally used to fund the government.
Aside from the Johnson-Young bill, the Senate will not consider other pieces of spending legislation on Thursday. Senators are scheduled to leave Washington, D.C., on Thursday and will return at the beginning of next week.
Leo Briceno is a politics reporter for the congressional team at Fox News Digital. He was previously a reporter with World Magazine.
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/essential-workers-left-unpaid-after-senate-democrats-kill-pay-bill