President Donald Trump on Saturday introduced that he’ll direct Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth to “use all out there funds to get our Troops PAID on October fifteenth” as the federal government shutdown nears its third week.
After the Senate didn’t approve spending laws this week, army members have been making ready to go with out their paychecks on Wednesday for the primary time in U.S. historical past.
“We’ve got recognized funds to do that, and Secretary Hegseth will use them to PAY OUR TROOPS,” the president wrote within the social media submit Saturday. “I can’t enable the Democrats to carry our Navy, and the whole Safety of our Nation, HOSTAGE, with their harmful Authorities Shutdown.”
To scrounge up sufficient cash to pay the troops, the Pentagon is tapping into its analysis and growth accounts to make use of funding Congress made out there for 2 years, in response to an OMB official. Particularly, about $8 billion is being shifted from accounts that fund army analysis, growth, testing and analysis efforts, in response to two individuals acquainted with the plan who have been granted anonymity to debate its particulars.
POLITICO beforehand reported that the White Home was weighing choices to maneuver cash round in case a congressional deal was not struck by subsequent week’s paycheck deadline. A type of choices was making use of stress on Republican leaders to place a standalone troop pay invoice on the ground. However each Home Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Chief John Thune got here out towards that possibility, regardless of assist from a number of congressional Republicans.
The White Home didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark about Trump’s submit.
Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) — who sponsored a bipartisan invoice to get troops paid — praised Trump’s transfer on X, saying “That is precisely what my Pay Our Troops Act was aiming to perform!” including “Now it’s time to get the federal government open!”
Many Republicans on Capitol Hill have been anticipating Trump to attempt to discover a solution to pay troops as GOP leaders held agency towards a standalone vote — particularly the big variety of GOP members with army bases of their districts.
However prime Republicans for a number of days cautioned the White Home towards tapping protection cash from the GOP megabill — which has already been assigned to shipbuilding and different tasks.
“Hopefully, the administration, earlier than they decide like that, will attain out to us,” Veterans’ Affairs Chair Mike Bost mentioned Thursday.
However Bost mentioned he would “love” if the White Home might discover a way to make sure service members didn’t miss paychecks amid the shutdown.
White Home officers had thought-about utilizing tariff income to cowl the paychecks, as POLITICO reported on Friday.
There could be actual repercussions for shifting funding throughout a authorities shutdown. Below the Antideficiency Act, a greater than 150-year-old regulation enacted to forestall federal businesses from spending cash Congress hasn’t appropriated, company officers who buck these restrictions withstand two years in jail and as much as $5,000 in fines.
Even earlier than Trump’s announcement, prime lawmakers have been questioning the legality of different strikes to faucet funding throughout the shutdown. “They’re violating the regulation left and proper,” Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the Home’s prime Democratic appropriator, advised reporters on Friday concerning the administration’s strikes to shift funding throughout the shutdown. “They need to be fined.”
DeLauro mentioned she trusts that the federal authorities’s prime watchdog, the Authorities Accountability Workplace, will push again towards any unlawful shifting of funding throughout the lapse. “GAO has been below unbelievable stress from the administration. However they stand tall, and so they do their job,” she mentioned.
The watchdog company isn’t but wanting into it. “We do not need a request to evaluation the present shutdown, and we do not need ongoing work on this matter,” a GAO spokesperson mentioned in an announcement.
In 2019, GAO decided that the Trump administration violated the regulation throughout the 35-day shutdown that occurred throughout Trump’s first presidency, by tapping recreation charges to maintain Nationwide Park Service operations working and in addition by making SNAP funds early. The watchdog warned that any future violations could be thought-about “understanding and willful,” and that company officers would face imprisonment and fines.
GAO says now, nevertheless, that the company doesn’t know “if the information and circumstances are the identical as in our prior 2019 resolution.”
Connor O’Brien and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.