Meadows, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and a leading conservative voice urging President Trump not to accept a short-term spending bill absent funding for a border wall, was responding to reporters who asked about Transportation Security Administration and Border Patrol agents who would be required to continue working on Christmas without getting a paycheck.

“It’s actually part of what you do when you sign up for any public service position," Meadows said. "And it’s not lost on me in terms of, you know, the potential hardship. At the same time, they know they would be required to work and even in preparation for a potential shutdown those groups within the agencies have been instructed to show up.”
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On the other hand, if the government does shut down, Meadows, unlike more than 800,000 federal workers, would still receive his pay on time. In past years, lawmakers in the Senate and the House have introduced “No Budget, No Pay" legislation, which would withhold lawmakers' salary if they didn’t get a budget resolution and all 12 appropriations bills finished on time.

It passed once in 2013 as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling, but it only applied for one year and wasn’t brought for a vote in subsequent years.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/12/20/rep-meadows-tells-federal-employees-who-wont-get-paid-during-shutdown-you-signed-up-this/

Gardner and Perdue’s efforts didn’t head off a shutdown. Yet the episode highlights an essential component of Trump’s style of being president, especially when it comes to dealing with Congress: his use of back-channels and personal relationships — often circumventing party leaders — to try to get deals done. Trump employs the tactic far more than any recent president. Sometimes it works, more often it doesn’t. And Friday was a case where it didn't work.

It happened, to real success, during the bipartisan negotiations over the criminal justice reform package. It happened again on Thursday, when conservative House GOP hard-liners Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan went around Republican leaders and urged Trump to back a bill providing $5 billion for the border wall, although that led directly to Friday's shutdown.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) had been ready to postpone the border wall fight until early February and avoid a partial government shutdown. Meadows and Jordan urged Trump to pick the fight with Democrats now, and Trump went along with them — ambushing McConnell and Ryan in the process.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/21/government-shutdown-congress-trump-border-wall-negotiations-1074189