On Monday, November 3, 2025, Mike Kennedy stood at a news conference at the Utah Capitol. The federal government had been shut down for 34 days. Food assistance for tens of thousands of Utah households had run out two days earlier.

Reporters asked him whether the House of Representatives should come back to Washington.

Kennedy said no:

"To call us back to have debates when the Democrats are not willing to open the government up is of no value."

He was not describing a hypothetical. He was describing what had already been happening for six weeks, and what would keep happening for another nine days.

54 days, zero votes

You don't have to take anyone's characterization of this. The House clerk publishes every recorded vote.

The last one before the shutdown was Roll Call 282, on September 19, 2025. The next one was Roll Call 283, on November 12, 2025 — the vote to reopen the government.

Between those two dates the House of Representatives recorded no votes at all. Not on a bill to pay federal workers. Not on a bill to fund food assistance. Not on the health care fight at the center of the whole standoff. Fifty-four days.

The shutdown itself ran from October 1 to November 12 — 43 days, the longest full government shutdown in U.S. history. Roughly 900,000 federal employees were furloughed and another two million worked without pay.

Kennedy's position was that this was fine. Not a failure to be fixed, not an emergency, but a reasonable use of the time.

The Republican senator from his own state saw it differently. Three days before Kennedy spoke, John Curtis became the first Republican senator to publicly call on Speaker Mike Johnson to bring the House back into session:

"Speaker Johnson, I love you, I love what you've done, but it's time to come back to work."

Same state, same party, same week. One of them thought the House had a job to do.

"There's nothing for me to talk with them about"

At that same November 3 appearance, KSL asked Kennedy about talking to the other side.

"I haven't talked to any Democrats because there's nothing for me to talk with them about."

He described where things stood this way:

"We know you can only hold your breath for so long. This is a breath-holding contest."

He also said the American people "should be disgusted, frankly, that five Senate Democrats can't come on board with a clean continuing resolution."

Take those three statements together and you have the whole posture. The other side is not worth speaking to. The situation is a contest of endurance. And the fault belongs entirely elsewhere — so there is nothing for him to do but wait.

There is a name for a member of Congress who won't negotiate, won't legislate, and won't show up: not on the job.

Who was holding their breath

The people in Kennedy's state weren't in a contest. They were out of money.

Food assistance ran out on November 1, 2025. State officials counted about 86,000 Utah households receiving those benefits, and nobody could tell them how much they'd get or when. Two federal judges eventually ordered the Trump administration to partially fund the program.

Kennedy said he supported that partial funding. He was also asked how long emergency food resources could carry people:

"How long is that going to be able to function? Not for very long."

He was right about that. He just didn't think it was worth a vote.

Meanwhile, the fight that caused the shutdown was about health insurance — whether to extend the enhanced tax credits that hold down premiums on the individual market. Those credits were allowed to expire. Kennedy had already voted with 196 other Republicans against extending them. He is a practicing family physician.

The paycheck

Give him this much: Kennedy did not take his own pay during the shutdown.

He sent a letter to the House financial office rejecting his salary, telling Deseret News it was "wildly inappropriate" for lawmakers to accept money while federal employees had no such choice. Sen. Curtis and Rep. Blake Moore did the same.

Then, at the start of the shutdown, he introduced the No Work, No Pay Act to make that automatic for everyone in Congress in future shutdowns. He was still pushing it in May 2026, arguing a law would be harder to undo than a Senate policy.

That's a real gesture, and it cost him real money. But look at what it concedes. "No work, no pay" is an admission that no work was being done. He built a bill around the fact that the House wasn't working, and then argued the House had no reason to come back and work.

Declining a paycheck is not the job. Voting is the job.

And the filibuster

The other thing Kennedy did with the time was muse about Senate rules.

"The 60-vote threshold is really interesting, and it seems to be a real struggle for us. Why not 55? Why not 53?"

He is a member of the House. He does not vote on the Senate's rules, and changing them would not have put a single dollar of food assistance into a Utah family's account in November 2025. It was the one procedural question in the building he had no say over — and it was the one he wanted to talk about.

His own chamber, the one he actually belongs to, sat out 54 days without recording a vote. He was asked to come back and do something about it, and he said it would be of no value.

Source

Salt Lake Tribune, "Rep. Mike Kennedy says no need for House members to be in Washington, floats changing the filibuster", November 2025. Photo: Chris Samuels / The Salt Lake Tribune.