If Congress Misses the Deadline, the Government Doesn't Stop.
A government shutdown is pure, self-inflicted dysfunction—a failure by Congress that somehow never lands on Congress. Non-essential workers get furloughed and then receive back pay anyway (a taxpayer-funded paid vacation); essential workers—air traffic controllers, TSA, border agents—are forced to keep working without pay; and ordinary citizens lose access to services they've already paid for. Meanwhile the members of Congress who couldn't do their most basic job keep drawing their salaries the entire time.
That's backwards, and this amendment flips it. We've drafted a fix that ends shutdowns for good and moves the pressure onto the people responsible. This is one of the constitutional amendments we're publishing on its own, so you can take up whichever matters most to you.
If Congress hasn't passed a budget by the deadline, funding automatically continues at last year's levels until they finish. No lapse, no shutdown, no furloughs, no unpaid essential workers, no shuttered services. This one move solves all three problems at once—because the "paid vacation" for furloughed workers only exists because shutdowns exist. Remove the shutdown and the whole ugly cascade disappears.
Our first instinct was to make the withheld pay forfeited—gone for good, not just delayed. Honestly, that's the stronger deterrent, and it's what a lot of people (us included) would prefer on principle.
But we made a practical choice to soften it to delayed pay—withheld during the standoff, released once they pass a budget. Why? Because a permanent-forfeiture version is far less likely to ever pass a Congress that would be voting on its own paychecks, and a delayed-pay rule still does the real work: no member wants to go weeks without a paycheck while stuck in Washington, unable to campaign, fundraise, or go home. We'd rather have a strong rule that can actually become law than a perfect one that never does.
Because an automatic budget removes the crisis, it could quietly remove the pressure to ever pass a real, updated budget—why bother, if last year's numbers just roll over? So the amendment adds a backstop: if Congress leans on the autopilot for more than four months, a small across-the-board trim (one percent, growing over time) kicks in until they do their job. Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the debt are shielded from that trim, so seniors are never the pressure point.
To be straight about it: this backstop is belt-and-suspenders. If our Balanced Budget Amendment passes, its enforcement handles spending discipline and this section becomes unnecessary. But since we can't count on that, this is a second, independent path toward the same goal.
This is a discussion draft prepared for review by legislative counsel and for presentation to Members of Congress—proposed constitutional text, not final legislative language. The wording will keep tightening as it moves forward.
Read the full text, share it, and—most importantly—send it to your Representative. All three are formatted Word documents you can print or attach to an email.
An amendment has to be proposed by Congress before any state can ratify it, so the people to contact are your U.S. Representative and your two U.S. Senators. Not sure who they are?
A short, specific message from a constituent carries real weight—far more than a mass-produced form letter. Personal calls to a district office count even more.
Here's a letter you can use as a starting point. Make it your own—if a shutdown ever furloughed you, forced you to work unpaid, or cut off a service you needed, say so. Fill in the bracketed pieces, then paste it into your Representative's contact form or print and mail it.
Consider attaching the one-page summary or the full text (above) so your Representative's office has the actual language in hand.
Almost nobody actually defends government shutdowns. They're not a policy; they're a hostage situation, and both parties have used them. Ending them for good—while making sure the cost of a budget fight falls on the politicians rather than on workers and the public—is about as common-sense as it gets.
Can't wait for an amendment? Our No Budget, No Pay bill is a realistic first step Congress could pass right now: when Congress shuts the government down, Members wait for their pay just like furloughed federal workers.