WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate approved a resolution Thursday that will prevent lawmakers in that chamber from receiving their paychecks during any government shutdowns that begin after this year’s midterm elections. 

The voice vote on the measure from Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy will not impact members in the House of Representatives since each chamber of Congress is able to set its own rules and procedures. 

The two-page resolution requires the secretary of the Senate to disperse but then hold onto lawmakers paychecks if Congress fails to fund any agency within the federal government on time. 

Kennedy said during a floor speech Wednesday he hoped the resolution would reduce the likelihood of future government shutdowns, following three within the last year. 

“It’s got to stop,” he said. “Shutting down government should not be our default solution to our refusal to work out our issues and our differences.”

Similar to how federal employees receive back pay after a shutdown ends, Kennedy said his resolution would do the same for senators.

“The senator’s salary just would not be available to that senator while we’re in a shutdown but once a shutdown is over you’ll get your money,” he said. 

In order to get the votes to adopt the resolution, Kennedy said he “had to make a few accommodations,” including that it did not apply to the House and wouldn’t take effect before the elections to comply with the 27th Amendment.  

Members of Congress earn $174,000 annually, with those in leadership positions making more. The Constitution allows lawmakers to set their own salaries, which are covered by a permanent, mandatory appropriation. 

Lawmakers and the president, unlike the staff who work for them or those throughout the rest of the federal government, received their salaries during past shutdowns unless they took action to halt their paychecks. 

Several members asked either the House Chief Administrative Officer or the Senate Finance Clerk to hold onto their paychecks during the first shutdown. 

Congress is supposed to pass the dozen annual government funding bills before the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1 but hasn’t completed all of its work on time in three decades. 

Lawmakers regularly approve at least one stopgap spending bill to keep federal programs running mostly on autopilot while the House and Senate work to finalize those appropriations bills during the fall, typically sending them to the president sometime in December. 

Policy differences and heightened political tensions, however, led to three shutdowns of varying impact during this fiscal year. 

The first began last October and lasted through Nov. 12 as Democrats tried unsuccessfully to force Republicans to extend enhanced tax credits for people who buy health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace. 

Lawmakers were able to pass six of the spending bills before a brief partial shutdown took place from Jan. 31 through Feb. 3. The law that ended that funding lapse included five more of the spending bills, leaving Homeland Security as the only department without its annual appropriations bill. 

Democratic demands for constraints on immigration enforcement after federal officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis led to a third shutdown for many of the agencies within DHS. That lasted from Feb. 14 through April 30 when Congress approved their last funding bill without new spending for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol. 

Republicans plan to use the complex budget reconciliation process to approve $72 billion that would cover three years of immigration enforcement activities. GOP lawmakers can do that without Democratic votes in the Senate as long as they stick to the rules.  

Lawmakers in both chambers have also begun work on the next fiscal year’s batch of 12 government funding bills, though it’s highly unlikely they all become law before the end of September. 

That presents the possibility of yet another government shutdown just weeks before voters head to the polls during November’s midterm elections to decide which political party will control Congress for the next two years. 

WASHINGTON — The seventh effort to stop President Donald Trump’s military campaign in Iran until he obtains congressional approval failed Wednesday in the U.S. Senate.

The vote marked the first test for Senate Republicans’ support for a War Powers Resolution after the expiration of the statute’s 60-day period granted to the president for military operations.

The vote failed 49-50, though notably Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, flipped for the first time to support limiting Trump’s unfettered war on Iran. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, for a second time since April 30, voted in favor.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voted yes, and Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., opposed the measure, as they both have done on previous votes.

Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., did not vote.

House lawmakers are expected to take up a similar War Powers Resolution as soon as Thursday.

The war, which Trump launched on Feb. 28 in conjunction with Israel, cost the lives of 13 American service members. The latest Pentagon figures reveal 404 service members were injured during Operation Epic Fury, the administration’s name for the conflict.

Ceasefire on ‘life support’

Despite a recent exchange of fire between Iran and the U.S. in the Strait of Hormuz, the administration maintains the operation is over, and claimed a 60-day clock on hostilities paused when the two countries agreed to a ceasefire in April. 

However, Trump told reporters Monday that any ceasefire between the two nations was on “massive life support.”

Iranian leaders have contested the existence of a ceasefire because of an ongoing U.S. Naval blockade on Iran’s ports.

Pentagon officials testified in both chambers of Congress Tuesday that the war to date has cost $29 billion, without accounting for Iran’s drone and missile damage to U.S. military installations in the region.

Hostilities ongoing, Dem says

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who sponsored the resolution, said Wednesday morning the Iran war has turned out to be “nothing like” the victory Trump promised.

“Both sides are still engaged in hostilities. And so I don’t accept that the 60-day clock is suspended,” Merkley said.

When asked Wednesday morning whether Republicans were whipping votes ahead of the War Powers Resolution, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that lawmakers should support the president while he’s overseas conducting high-stakes meetings with Chinese officials, including China’s leader Xi Jinping.

“He’s negotiating with the Chinese on a whole range of issues, some of which bear on national security, and I think it would be best if everybody hung together and supported the president,” Thune, R-S.D., said. “But we’ll see. … People have their own minds about some of these issues.”

Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators across the aisle pushed back Tuesday against President Donald Trump’s proposal to eliminate funding for programs serving disadvantaged students.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon defended those and other proposed cuts to her agency outlined in Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which calls for $75.7 billion in new discretionary budget authority for the department that would mark a $3.2 billion, or 4.1%, reduction from fiscal 2026 levels. 

The administration has taken major steps to dismantle the 46-year-old Department of Education as part of the president’s quest to send education “back to the states.” That effort continues despite much of the funding and oversight of schools already occurring at the state and local levels.

“We’ve been clear: Shifting authority back to the states will not come at the expense of the central federal programs (and) support, much of which predate the department itself,” McMahon told lawmakers at the hearing of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.

The panel shares jurisdiction over Education Department spending with the corresponding subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. The president’s budget request is generally considered a starting point for negotiations, but Congress is responsible for deciding federal spending.

Bipartisan support for TRIO 

Republican and Democratic senators took particular aim at the administration’s proposal to eliminate Federal TRIO Programs in fiscal 2027.

The Federal TRIO Programs — funded at $1.19 billion this fiscal year — help support groups including low-income students, first-generation college students, individuals with disabilities and veterans. 

Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the full Senate Appropriations Committee, said she opposes the president’s proposal to eliminate TRIO, noting that these programs have “changed the lives of countless first-generation and low-income students in Maine and across the country.” 

The Maine Republican added that TRIO “enjoys robust support and has made such a difference in the lives of children.” 

Arkansas GOP Sen. John Boozman also emphasized his support for TRIO, noting that in his state, these programs “have been a game-changer in helping low-income and first-generation students not only access higher education, but also succeed once they are there.” 

Sen. Jeff Merkley was the first in his family to go to college and said he comes from a “very blue-collar, frontier, homesteading, timber background.”

The Oregon Democrat said it’s from that perspective he believes that “having conscious programs to help people overcome the cultural chasm that exists between blue-collar kids like myself and that college world that you have very little contact on is enormously valuable in America, and the stats from these programs are pretty damn impressive.” 

The secretary told the panel that while “there are many instances where the TRIO program has been very beneficial … as we look across the country in how to spend these dollars and how to have similar results by maybe not necessarily focusing students towards college degrees, maybe there’s another way for them to have their path to success.” 

McMahon said her agency was in the process of spending “about $2.1 million” for investigating and evaluating the TRIO programs.

In its summary of Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget request, the department said that TRIO “has failed to meet the vast majority of its performance measures, and studies of program effectiveness have shown that it has not increased college enrollment.” 

Dems decry plan to eliminate agency

Meanwhile, McMahon took heat from the leading Democrats on the subcommittee and the broader Senate Appropriations panel over the administration’s ongoing efforts to dismantle the agency. 

Part of those efforts include several interagency agreements between Education and the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior, State and Treasury that transfer many of Education’s responsibilities to those agencies.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, ranking member of the subcommittee, said Education “is transferring the vast majority of its programs to other federal departments, agencies with little experience or expertise or capacity to administer them.” 

The Wisconsin Democrat said that instead of “reducing bureaucracy” — a major goal of the administration across the federal government and the department in particular — the transfers are creating “another layer of it.”

She added that “where states previously primarily dealt with the Department of Education, they will now have to deal with multiple federal agencies.” 

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the full Appropriations Committee, pressed McMahon on the status of the administration mulling the transfer of special education services out of the Education Department amid its dismantling efforts. 

The possible move to transfer programs out of the department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services has stoked widespread concern from disability advocates.

McMahon said her department was “still evaluating where those programs would best be located, and we have not made that determination yet.” 

“I can assure you that the intent of this administration is not to put these students at risk in any way whatsoever,” McMahon said. 

But Murray was not satisfied with the secretary’s response, saying she is “deeply concerned that your answer sounds like you’re still moving ahead — let’s make it clear that will break the law, and it will make it a lot harder for these students with disabilities to get the education and understanding that their country will stand behind them with that.”