WASHINGTON — Get to work or get arrested.

That’s the threat that Colorado’s two U.S. senators are leveling at their fellow lawmakers as a way to cut short, and maybe even prevent, future government shutdowns.

On Thursday, Democrat Michael Bennet and Republican Cory Gardner plan to introduce legislation that would impose strict rules — including the possibility of arrest — on the Senate anytime one or more federal agencies were thrown into shutdown mode.

It’s a situation that nearly occurred this year with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and one that impacted the entire federal government in October 2013.

Under the Bennet-Gardner bill, the Senate would be forced to take attendance roughly once an hour — every day — between 8 a.m. and midnight for as long as a shutdown continued.

The rationale, said Bennet and Gardner, was to keep lawmakers in town to negotiate.

“If someone’s idea is to grind the government to a halt, then members of Congress ought to be darn well sure they’re finding a solution together,” Gardner said. “You can’t do it by flying home. You can’t do it by going to your respective political corners. You can only do it when you’re here together, at work.”

And here’s the kicker. If a majority of senators aren’t on hand for the attendance count, officially called a quorum call, then the remaining lawmakers have the power to seek the arrest of their missing colleagues, according to a preview of the measure.

For more than two centuries, the Senate has had the ability to compel attendance, but the Colorado legislators’ bill would make clear that an arrest warrant is the penalty for skipping town during a shutdown.

“It’s using existing procedure,” Gardner said. “(But) this procedure is a little bit of a hammer.”

Neither Bennet nor Gardner expects that their bill would lead to a slew of arrests, but they said they hoped it would bring a measure of culpability.

“Here’s what we expect,” said Bennet, who spoke in his Washington office alongside Gardner. “The members of the United States Senate would understand that … if they shut the government down, they will suffer consequences.”

A showy bill

Without question, the bill is a bit showy.

But both lawmakers said they’ve been working on the legislation for months — and that aides have spent hours with the parliamentarian to ensure they got the rules right.

Plus, the fact that a lawmaker from each of Congress’ two warring parties is co-sponsoring the bill gives it some measure of hope.

“No other enterprise that I have ever worked in produces the kinds of self-inflicted wounds that this institution has been producing over the last several years,” Bennet said. “And this is a way of trying to address that.”

Indeed, the measure includes more than just the threat of arrest — there’s a shame component too.

If the Senate moves to arrest the absent lawmakers, the sergeant at arms would be required, once an hour, to report the names of the missing senators and whatever information was available about their current location.

In extreme situations, the sergeant at arms also would be empowered to recruit other law enforcement officials to track down senators who have gone AWOL — although Senate aides said lawmakers wouldn’t be sent to jail but instead brought to the Senate floor.

“I don’t think anybody wants a headline back home saying that ‘Senator so-and-so had to be escorted by the sergeant at arms to do their job,’ ” Gardner said.

The idea for the bill stemmed from joint frustration over the 2013 government shutdown, and Bennet and Gardner began talking about legislation after the latter’s election last year.

Neither one said he has approached other senators about the bill, but both expressed optimism at finding supporters.

“Now we’ll start to get colleagues on board,” Bennet said.

Arresting power

In the last century, the arresting power that goes along with Senate attendance has been employed only on a handful of occasions.

The last time was in 1988 during a debate over campaign-finance reform. Not enough senators were present at the time for a quorum call, so Senate leaders decided to send the sergeant at arms and Capitol police officers to round up the missing lawmakers.

One of the absent legislators was then-U.S. Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., who was found and carried feet-first into the chamber.

Mark K. Matthews: 202-662-8907, mmatthews@ denverpost.com or twitter.com/mkmatthews