The Senate is gone until Monday, meaning the government shutdown is all but guaranteed to go into its fourth week. The impact of the spending impasse is growing more severe every day.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune could tee up votes as soon as next week on separate bills to pay members of the military and air traffic controllers as he looks to increase pressure on Senate Democrats. Speaker Mike Johnson refuses to bring the House back until Democrats agree to reopen the government. Members have been gone from Capitol Hill for 35 days now.
On Thursday, Democratic senators filibustered Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) bill to pay federal employees who’ve been forced to work without pay during the shutdown, arguing the measure gives Trump too much discretion.
A Democratic counter-proposal from Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) was also rejected. Johnson and Van Hollen are discussing potentially merging their bills, which Thune said he was open to.
But Thune slammed Democrats for rejecting the Johnson bill and reiterated his view that the best way to pay federal workers is to vote to reopen the government immediately.
“I can’t explain the level of dysfunction on their side right now,” Thune lamented. “But they’re consistently shifting their messaging which, to me, suggests they really don’t know … how to get out of this right now.”
Sen. Johnson’s spokesperson, Grace Carnathan, said the Wisconsin Republican “will work diligently and in good faith to find agreement between the two sides in order to pay federal workers during the shutdown.”
An eye on 2026. Interestingly, Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) joined Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) in backing Johnson’s bill. They were the only Democrats to do so.
Ossoff is the most endangered Senate Democrat in 2026, and it’s notable that he felt pressure to vote for the measure even while continuing to reject the House-passed stopgap funding bill.
“Jon Ossoff could’ve easily voted to reopen the government and pay Georgia workers any of the 12 times he voted to keep it closed,” NRSC spokesperson Nick Puglia said in a statement.
Georgia has the world’s busiest airport — Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport — as well as the CDC headquarters and numerous military bases. All of these were undoubtedly factors that played into Ossoff and Warnock’s calculus.
But Georgia is far from the only state with busy airports and a robust federal government presence. The rest of the Senate Democratic Caucus still felt comfortable enough to block Johnson’s bill.
While these votes can be politically uncomfortable for many Democrats, they can also give vulnerable Democrats like Ossoff an opportunity to show some independence from the party.
As for Warnock, it’s not uncommon for a senator who’s not in-cycle to back up their home-state counterpart in these circumstances. But Warnock didn’t deviate from the Democratic argument about the broader shutdown dynamics.
“[Republicans are] holding federal workers hostage, and just because they’ve decided to shut down the government doesn’t mean that these workers ought to be punished,” Warnock said. “So some of these folks they’re holding hostage had a path to get some relief. I’m happy to offer that to them.”
Some shutdown polling news: Senate Majority PAC, the pro-Democratic super PAC, is circulating Hart Research polling showing that 52% of voters say President Donald Trump and Republicans are to blame for the shutdown versus just 41% who say Democrats are more to blame. The findings underscore how Democrats are feeling little pressure to cave.
