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The Pentagon will provide research dollars to pay troops during the shutdown

Marines assigned to a U.S. Marine Corps Silent Exercise Platoon congratulate newly promoted Sgt. Nathan Cox, platoon sergeant, during a field event at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, Sept. 4, 2025. (Photo by Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Brynn Bouchard/Department of Defense)

WASHINGTON – The Trump administration plans to send pay checks to active-duty troops this week, even though Congress has not passed legislation authorizing it during the ongoing shutdown.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who declined to reconvene the House to pass a separate military pay bill, welcomed the action during a news conference Monday, although he did not comment on whether the administration had that legal authority.

“We are very grateful that President Trump, once again demonstrating strong leadership, has made every effort to ensure our troops are paid on October 15,” Johnson said.

Congress approved the bill just before the 2013 government shutdown began, titled the “Pay Us Your Troops” Act, which allocated funds to ensure timely payments to active-duty and reserve troops during the lapse of the appropriations.

A similar bill was not necessary during the 2018-2019 shutdown because Congress had already approved the annual defense appropriations bill, one of a dozen full-year government spending bills that are scheduled to go into effect with the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year.

Johnson and other Republicans have grappled for weeks with questions about whether the House would pass similar legislation again, but he refused. The Louisiana Republican has repeatedly said that if Democrats wanted to keep troops paid while the appropriations expired, they would have passed a stopgap spending bill that has stalled in the Senate.

President Donald Trump announced on social media this weekend that his administration would provide payments to troops absent congressional action.

“Therefore, I am using my authority as Commander in Chief to direct our Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to use all available funds to ensure our troops are PAID on October 15,” Trump wrote. “We have identified funds for this purpose and Secretary Hegseth will use them to pay our troops.”

A Pentagon spokesman said Monday that the department “has identified approximately $8 billion in unobligated Research and Development and Evaluation (RDTE) funds from the prior fiscal year that will be used to issue semi-monthly pay checks to staff members in the event that the funding lapse continues after October 15.”

“We will provide more information as it becomes available.”

The White House did not immediately respond Monday to States Newsroom’s request for comment.

Removes the pressure point

Typically during a government shutdown, at the federal level employees are categorized as exempt, meaning they continue to work or are on furlough. Everyone should have received back pay under the 2019 law signed by Trump, although they currently do looking for ways reinterpret it.

Active-duty military members are considered indispensable to federal operations and continue to work during the shutdown, but in the past, failure to pay troops has been seen as a pressure point for lawmakers to negotiate a settlement.

Trump’s actions removed the incentive for Republicans and Democrats to negotiate some sort of deal sooner rather than later.

Wendell Primus, an economics research fellow at Brookings, said the administration’s decision to move “this amount of funds between defense accounts is highly illegal. But in many ways it is no more illegal than all the illegal seizures that are taking place. It also reduces the pressure on Congress to end the shutdown.”

Primus worked for nearly two decades for former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as her senior policy adviser on health and budget issues.

Johnson maintained during his press conference that Republican leaders would not negotiate with Democrats on their health care issues until the shutdown ended.

Democratic leaders have said for months that lawmakers must reach an agreement to expand increased tax credits for people who buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act platform. The loans expire at the end of the year.

Democrats blocked House-passed short-lived spending billthat would fund the federal government through November 21, continuing until a bipartisan grant agreement is reached.

Johnson said Democrats chose to let these tax breaks expire at the end of this year because they were tied to helping people pay for health insurance during the coronavirus pandemic.

Since then, he said, the increased tax credits have become a “buzz” that has caused health insurance costs to rise faster than he believes would otherwise occur.

“It’s a subsidy for insurance companies. When you subsidize the health care system and pay insurers more, prices go up. That’s a problem,” Johnson said. “So if the subsidy is really to continue, it needs real reform.”

Renovation of health care?

Johnson said lawmakers need October and part of November to determine how best to address expiring tax credits, though he also seemed interested in changing other elements of the Affordable Care Act.

“Can we completely repeal and replace Obamacare? Many of us are skeptical about it right now because the roots are so deep. I think the way it was created was really sinister,” Johnson said. “I believe Obamacare was designed to implode on itself, to collapse in on itself.”

Johnson, who was a freshman lawmaker in 2017 when Republicans tried to repeal and replace the ACA, said he still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from the failure of the Senate effort in the face of opposition from the slow Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Republican.

“It was a great frustration for me and it always has been with President Trump, and we know that American health care needs radical reforms,” he said. “Let’s put it simply: Obamacare has failed the American people.”

Johnson said any effort to change the 15-year-old law would take a long time, but he didn’t mention it during the news conference.

“You can’t just rip out the roots and start over,” Johnson said. “It’s a very, very complicated series of measures and steps that need to be taken to fix this.”

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