An earlier version of the No Budget, No Pay Act (unrelated to the debt ceiling) was originally introduced in early 2012 by Jim Cooper, a Democratic congressman from Tennessee.

This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Congressional Budget Office.

If a version of such a resolution has not been passed by a House of the Congress by April 15, 2013, the salaries of Members of that chamber would be put in an escrow account.

The escrow account for a given House would remain in place until a concurrent resolution on the budget was passed for fiscal year 2014 by that chamber, or until the last day of the 113th Congress, whichever was earlier.

[12] The act implicates constitutional concerns, because the Twenty-seventh Amendment provides that Congress may not "vary" the compensation of senators and representatives until there has been an intervening election.

[13][14] The act would withhold the pay of legislators only temporarily (pending passage of a budget), rather than permanently; commentators differ on whether this is permissible under the Twenty-seventh Amendment.