Marines with the U.S. Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon congratulate newly promoted Gunnery Sgt. Nathan Cox, platoon leader, 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 paychecks to active-duty troops this week, even though Congress has not passed a law allowing it during the ongoing shutdown.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who has refused to bring the House back into session to pass a standalone bill to pay troops, welcomed the action during a news conference Monday but did not comment on whether the administration has that legal authority.
“We are very grateful that President Trump once again demonstrated his leadership and ensured our troops are paid on October 15,” Johnson said.
congress approved a bill just before the start of the government shutdown in 2013 called the Pay Our Military Act, which provided funds to ensure on-time paychecks for vigorous duty and reserve troops during that funding shortfall.
A similar bill was not needed during the 2018-2019 shutdown because Congress had already approved the annual defense appropriations bill, one of a dozen year-round government spending bills scheduled to take effect by the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1.
Johnson and other Republicans have faced questions for weeks about whether the House would return to pass a similar bill, but he declined. The Louisiana Republican has repeatedly said that if Democrats wanted to ensure troops were paid during the funding shortfall, they would pass the stopgap spending bill, which remains stalled in the Senate.
President Donald Trump announced on social media this weekend that his administration would provide paychecks for military members if Congress takes no 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 pay our troops on October 15th,” Trump wrote. “We have allocated funds for this and Minister Hegseth will use these to pay our troops.”
A Pentagon spokesman said Monday that the department had identified “approximately $8 billion in unrestricted research, development, test and evaluation (RDTE) funding from the prior fiscal year that will be used to issue mid-month paychecks to military personnel if funding continues beyond Oct. 15.”
“We will provide further information as it becomes available.”
The White House did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment on Monday.
Removes pressure points
Typically during a government shutdown, at the federal level Workers are categorized are considered exempt, meaning they continue to work or are furloughed. Under a 2019 law Trump signed, everyone is supposed to receive back pay, although he does now look for ways to reinterpret it.
Active-duty military members are considered crucial to federal operations and continue to work during a shutdown, but a missed paycheck for troops has been seen in the past as a pressure point for lawmakers to negotiate a deal.
Trump’s actions have removed the incentive for Republicans and Democrats to negotiate a deal sooner rather than later.
Wendell Primus, a visiting fellow in economics at Brookings University, 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 any of the illegal seizures currently taking place. It also has the effect of reducing pressure on Congress to end the shutdown.”
Primus worked for former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, as her senior policy adviser on health and budget issues for nearly two decades.
Johnson claimed during his press conference that Republican leaders would not negotiate with Democrats over their health care issues until after the shutdown ended.
Democratic leaders have said for months that lawmakers must reach an agreement to extend expanded tax credits for people who buy health insurance on the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace. The credits are expected to expire at the end of the year.
The Democrats blocked it The House of Representatives passed a stopgap billwhich the federal government would fund by November 21, from moving forward to a cross-party agreement on the subsidies.
Johnson said Democrats decided to end these tax credits at the end of the year because they were tied to helping people afford health insurance during the coronavirus pandemic.
Since then, he said, the expanded tax credits have become a “nonsense” that has caused health insurance costs to rise faster than he believes would have otherwise been the case.
“It’s a subsidy to insurance companies. When you subsidize the health care system and pay insurance companies more, prices go up. That was the problem,” Johnson said. “So if the subsidies are actually to be continued, real reform is needed.”
Healthcare reform?
Johnson said lawmakers would need October and part of November to decide how best to address the expiring tax credits. But he also seemed interested in overhauling other elements of the Affordable Care Act.
“Can we completely repeal and replace Obamacare? A lot of us are skeptical about that now because the roots are so deep. The way it was created, I think, was really scary,” Johnson said. “I think Obamacare was designed to implode on itself, collapse 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 because the effort failed in the Senate due to opposition from the tardy Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Republican.
“It was a great disappointment to me, and it has always been a great disappointment to President Trump, and we know that American health care needs dramatic reform,” he said. “Let’s just say it: Obamacare has failed the American people.”
Johnson said any effort to overhaul the 15-year-old law would take a lot of time, but he gave no indication of that during his news conference.
“You can’t just rip it at the root and start over,” Johnson said. “It’s a very, very complicated series of actions and steps that you have to take to fix the problem.”
