Senators want shutdown bill fast-tracked

“The resolution will have the effect of keeping a majority of Senators on or near the Senate floor in the event of a government shutdown. More importantly, it will discourage the Senate from contemplating a shutdown in the first place,” the Colorado senators wrote in a letter sent to Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Charles Schumer (D.-N.Y.), the top members of the Senate Rules Committee. 

{mosads}The letter, sent on Friday, comes as lawmakers face an end-of-the-month deadline to figure out how to fund the government and avoid a shutdown. While Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and top Republicans have repeatedly pledged that they won’t let the government come to a halt, the Senate has yet to tee up consideration of a spending bill. 

Under the resolution, the Senate must come into session at 8 a.m. every day the government is shut down, and if a majority of senators aren’t present, the Senate could vote to have the chamber’s sergeant-at-arms force them to come to the Senate floor. 

Furthermore, if senators aren’t on the floor within an hour, the sergeant-at-arms will be ordered to “arrest absent Senators; that warrants for the arrests of all Senators not sick nor excused be issued under the signature of the Presiding Officer and attested by the Secretary, and that such warrants be executed without delay,” the resolution proposes. 

Two-thirds of the Senate would also have to agree to recess any time between 8 a.m. and 11:59 p.m.

The senators call their resolution “a common sense approach” to make sure the Senate passes a budget and is able to keep the government open. 

“It’s our hope that our resolution can play a role in preventing Congress from engaging in further brinksmanship at this critical point in time,” they add in the letter.