Outside the Beltway

Trump to Pay Troops with ‘Available Funds’

Congress, Schmongress.

James Joyner · Sunday, October 12, 2025 · 7 comments

AP (“Trump directs the Pentagon to use ‘all available funds’ to ensure troops are paid despite shutdown”):

President Donald Trump said Saturday that he has directed the Defense Department to use “all available funds” to ensure U.S. troops are paid Wednesday despite the government shutdown, a short-term fix that will not apply to the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who have been furloughed.

Trump said in a social media post that he was acting because “our Brave Troops will miss the paychecks they are rightfully due on October 15th.”

The Republican president’s directive removes one of the pressure points that could have forced Congress into action, likely ensuring that the shutdown — now in its 11th day and counting — extends into a third week and possibly beyond. But no similar action seems forthcoming for federal employees also working without pay while thousands are now being laid off during the lapse in government operations. The White House budget office started the layoffs on Friday.

Trump blamed Democrats and said he was exercising his authority as commander in chief to direct Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “to use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th.” The Republican president added, “We have identified funds to do this, and Secretary Hegseth will use them to PAY OUR TROOPS.”

[…]

Trump did not say where he’s getting the money, but a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget said Pentagon research and development funds would be tapped.

The Pentagon said it identified about $8 billion of unobligated research development testing and evaluation funds from the last fiscal year that will be used to issue the mid-month paychecks, “in the event the funding lapse continues past October 15th.”

Considering that the 15th is Wednesday, the Senate is out of session until Tuesday, and the House is out of session indefinitely, the funding lapse will almost certainly continue past the 15th. And, as noted, this removes what was almost certainly the biggest pressure point to make a compromise soon. Because, naturally, people in uniform going unpaid generates more sympathy than faceless bureaucrats going unpaid because, well, reasons.

At any rate, readers who had at least one class on how the U.S. government is supposed to work may be thinking that Congress controls the power of the purse and wondering how the President can repurpose funding like this.

The simple answer: Who’s going to stop him?

I’ve often quoted a line from Dallas patriarch Jock Ewing to his son, Bobby: “Nobody gives you power. Real power is something you take!” Since neither Congressional Republicans (who constitute a majority in both Houses) nor the Republican-supermajority Supreme Court seem inclined to interfere, it appears that Trump has taken on near-complete control of the budget.

The POLITICO report on this (“Pentagon will pay military troops, Trump says, shifting $8B“) notes, it’s not just the Constitution, but Federal law:

There can be real repercussions for shifting funding during a government shutdown. Under the Antideficiency Act, a more than 150-year-old law enacted to prevent federal agencies from spending money Congress hasn’t appropriated, agency officials who buck those restrictions face up to two years in prison and up to $5,000 in fines.

Even before Trump’s announcement, top lawmakers were questioning the legality of other moves to tap funding during the shutdown. “They are violating the law left and right,” Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s top Democratic appropriator, told reporters on Friday about the administration’s moves to shift funding during the shutdown. “They should be fined.”

DeLauro said she trusts that the federal government’s top watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, will push back against any illegal shifting of funding during the lapse. “GAO has been under unbelievable pressure from the administration. But they stand tall, and they do their job,” she said.

The watchdog agency isn’t yet looking into it. “We do not have a request to review the current shutdown, and we do not have ongoing work on this matter,” a GAO spokesperson said in a statement.

In 2019, GAO determined that the Trump administration violated the law during the 35-day shutdown that occurred during Trump’s first presidency, by tapping recreation fees to keep National Park Service operations running and also by making SNAP payments early. The watchdog warned that any future violations would be considered “knowing and willful,” and that agency officials would face imprisonment and fines.

GAO says now, however, that the agency doesn’t know “if the facts and circumstances are the same as in our prior 2019 decision.”

Given that we’ve seen that the President can simply fire agency heads who issue directives he dislikes, I don’t think the GAO is going to be a problem.