Ocasio-Cortez calls for congressional salaries to be furloughed during next shutdown

Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Saturday called for congressional salaries to be furloughed during the next government shutdown.

Roughly a quarter of federal agencies closed when Congress failed to meet a midnight funding deadline on Friday. Lawmakers arrived Saturday at the Capitol as congressional negotiators try to find a path forward on a deal to end the funding lapse.{mosads}

“It’s completely unacceptable that members of Congress can force a government shutdown on partisan lines & then have Congressional salaries exempt from that decision,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.

“Have some integrity,” she added, calling for salaries to be furloughed for the next shutdown.

Salaries for both members of the House and the Senate are written into permanent law, with most members making $174,000 a year.

Government shutdowns only affect agencies and employees that are funded through annual appropriations.

Thousands of federal employees in “nonessential” government functions are told to stay home and may be prohibited from showing up to work.

Congress in the past has acted to pay those employees as part of deals to reopen the government after previous shutdowns.

Federal workers will still be paid for the pay period ending Dec. 22, the White House Office of Management and Budget has said. But if the shutdown extends past Jan. 5, they will miss their next paycheck.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) for the second time this year has announced that any money she makes from her salary while the government is shut down will be donated to charities in her home state of Nevada. 

“I cannot take a salary during a government shutdown knowing that so many federal workers in Nevada and across the country will go without pay,” Cortez Masto tweeted shortly after the shutdown began at midnight.