It's a weird system over the pond I have to say.

And nobody is forced to work, like being at a startup that has some liquidity hiccups, sometimes you take a delayed paycheck. Other times you find other work.

And for the nonessential employees, they legally can't work but get paid for their time when the government reopens. If you aren't living paycheck to paycheck, it's a great opportunity to work on that Steam backlog.

A majority of (or at least, enough) Democrats decide they want something unpopular.

They calculate exactly how many Democrats need to vote for the thing they want to happen. Notice how it always passes by one vote.

They figure out which Democrats who want the unpopular thing and will suffer the fewest consequences by voting for it. Notice how the Democrats who voted for the unpopular thing are always ones who are either unable to be voted out soon, or are guaranteed to be voted out because they hit term limits soon, and in either case they have nothing to lose by being unpopular.

Only those Democrats vote for the unpopular thing, and the remaining Democrats and the party as a whole suffer minimal reputational damage.

In this case, the Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer, despite voting against the unpopular thing because his reputational damage would not be minimal, was almost certainly involved in organizing it.

They may or may not compensate them for being the fall guys. Possibly the thing itself is enough compensation. Politicians love when their private jets are allowed to take off because air traffic controllers are getting paid (or forced to work for no pay).