Congress

Lawmakers bemoan Trump’s latest power grab: Troop pay

Published

8 months ago

October 20, 2025

Members of Congress say they’re happy military troops are getting paid during the shutdown — but not necessarily that President Donald Trump is claiming vast power over the federal spending process to do it.

In a sweeping order last week, Trump gave both the Pentagon and the White House budget office the green light to use “any funds” left over for the current fiscal year to bankroll paychecks for active-duty servicemembers, which were due to be withheld last Wednesday amid the government funding standoff.

The move took the onus off lawmakers to vote on standalone legislation to pay troops during the funding lapse — something House and Senate GOP leadership had resisted, fearing it would reduce pressure on Democrats to vote for the Republican plan to reopen the government as the minority party demands bipartisan negotiations on health care.

The Senate is scheduled to consider legislation this week that would allow members of the military and other federal workers to receive pay while the government remains shuttered. It’s far from certain it will attract the necessary 60 votes to advance or would ever be brought to the floor in the House, which has been in recess since passage of the GOP-backed stopgap more than a month ago.

Against this backdrop, lawmakers who oppose Trump’s troop funding gambit have been careful to couch their criticism of the method with support for the end result.

“Look, I want the troops to be paid,” said Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, a senior appropriator and likely the Senate’s next Democratic whip. “But, as usual, they find the most illegal way to do everything.”

But Republicans are also among the many lawmakers highly skeptical about the legality of Trump’s actions. The president invoked his authority as commander in chief to claim missed paychecks would pose an “unacceptable threat to military readiness” — but the law requires the president to seek approval from Congress before moving around money, and there are many constraints to what can be done even with lawmakers’ passive consent.

“While it’s a desired outcome, there’s a process that’s required — by Constitution and by law — for Congress to be not only consulted but engaged,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a brief interview last week.

And the issue isn’t going away. According to two White House officials not authorized to speak publicly, Trump will continue to use funding for military paychecks during the shutdown, if Congress doesn’t pass a government funding bill before the next pay date at month’s end.

At the same time, Trump administration officials have not provided top congressional appropriators with details about how much cash the White House believes is available for use, nor have they submitted requests to Capitol Hill to reprogram any money.

“There’s a way we take care of this. It’s called appropriations. It’s called reprogramming. And I don’t think that process is being respected,” said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, another leading Republican appropriator and frequent Trump critic.

The Trump administration privately told lawmakers that it tapped $6.5 billion from a pot of about $10 billion in unspent military research and development funding to pay troops ahead of the Oct. 15 paycheck date.

“The appropriations committee in general believes that it should get more information and that we should receive a list of canceled work” and “contracts,” Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) told reporters last week.

On Friday the White House sent lawmakers a five-page document detailing its argument for why the president has the power to use funding for a different purpose than Congress mandated in law. The bulleted list of talking points cites examples like then-President George Washington tapping military funding in 1794 for the militia to respond to the Whiskey Rebellion.

But administration officials have not relayed how much other money they believe could be used to pay troops when the next paychecks are due on Oct. 31.

The White House is already hunting for any available money to address other funding shortfalls during the shutdown to support politically popular programs. That includes options to pay at least a segment of federal workers, and potentially reopen key loans for struggling farmers amid quiet pressure from Senate GOP Leader John Thune and other farm-state lawmakers, according to two Trump officials and two senior Hill Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter.

White House officials also need to figure out how to manage the dilemma over SNAP, the country’s largest food assistance program that serves 42 million low-income Americans, which will start to run out of funds Nov. 1.

The federal government’s top watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, typically weighs in on the legality of shifting funding during a government shutdown. When Trump was president during the last, lengthy funding lapse that ended in early 2019, GAO concluded that his administration twice violated the law with its funding moves, warning that officials would face fines and up to two years in prison for future violations.

This time around, however, GAO has yet to receive any lawmaker requests to review Trump’s maneuver to pay members of the military — even as the independent oversight agency is working to determine whether the administration has violated the law by firing federal workers during the shutdown.

“GAO has a process it goes through to determine whether we do work and when, which we are working through,” a spokesperson for the office said in a statement.

Meanwhile, not everyone is questioning the legal standing of Trump’s actions.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he supported Trump’s move “once the House made it plain that they were unwilling to come back to do a military pay bill.”

He added, “I’m glad they were able to find undesignated dollars within the defense budget they could use. As long as they keep it within defense, I think that they’re on solid ground.”

Republicans also know there’s at least one major deterrent for lawmakers to legally challenge Trump’s maneuvers to send paychecks to military troops: any outspoken critic risks being branded as unpatriotic.

“If the Democrats want to go to court and challenge troops being paid,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters last week, “bring it.”

Connor O’Brien and Leo Shane III contributed to this report.

Congress

Johnson-backed plan to combine Pentagon and election bills advances to floor

Published

2 hours ago

June 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The House Rules Committee advanced a procedural measure aimed at breaking an intra-Republican deadlock Monday night. But GOP leaders are still facing a major battle Tuesday to regain control of the House floor.

The panel approved on party lines a measure to set up Republicans’ $1.1 trillion defense policy bill, a government funding bill and other GOP bills for floor debate. It would then combine the Pentagon bill, once passed, with the contentious elections overhaul known as the SAVE America Act and send it to the Senate as one piece of legislation.

That maneuver, telegraphed by Speaker Mike Johnson earlier Monday, is aimed at appeasing House GOP hard-liners who have blockaded the floor, demanding the Senate pass the elections bill that has languished there for months.

However, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, the Republican leading the blockade, said in an interview Monday before the Rules Committee acted that Johnson’s plan is not sufficient — raising the possibility she and allies could vote down the measure on the floor. Other House GOP hard-liners say there are other outstanding issues to battle over Tuesday.

Rep. James McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Rules Democrat, called the merger move “a big waste of time.” The panel voted down a motion by McGovern to remove the provision to combine the two bills in a party-line vote.

The Senate is set to debate its own version of the defense bill next month, and it is likely that the elections overhaul will be removed in negotiations between the two chambers — as McGovern acknowledged Monday and House GOP leaders privately concede.

“The Senate will just strip the SAVE Act out,” he said at the meeting. “There is a zero percent chance SAVE ends up in the [Pentagon bill] because of this rule today.”

The defense bill faces a tight vote if Republicans can pass the procedural measure. Most Democrats are expected to oppose the measure over its massive price tag, which they contend is wasteful.

The panel is set up debate on 312 amendments to the bill. The slate includes GOP measures to codify a Trump executive order to block transgender people from serving in the military, prohibit coverage of gender-affirming care, block aid to arm Ukraine and strip Democratic-backed protections for collective bargaining for Pentagon civilian workers.

The committee also voted down Democratic proposals to slash $150 billion from the bill’s topline and limit the war against Iran.

Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

Congress

Pentagon and elections bills could be combined in bid to unfreeze House floor

Published

4 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday he plans to deploy an unusual procedural maneuver in a bid to unfreeze the House floor this week, seeking to send the annual Pentagon policy bill and the GOP elections bill known as the SAVE America Act to the Senate in a single package.

That is likely a recipe for a continued standoff between the two chambers over the SAVE America Act, which has stalled in the Senate for months due to internal GOP divides. Under Johnson’s plan, the annual defense policy bill, which typically passes every year with large bipartisan majorities, could become a collateral victim of the impasse.

Asked in brief interview if he had talked to Senate Majority Leader John Thune about his plans, Johnson replied, “I have to do my job in the House, and they’ve got to do their job in the Senate, so we’ll see what happens.”

Johnson is seeking to placate House conservative hard-liners, led by Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who have threatened to oppose the procedural measures that give Republicans control of the floor unless they agree to tougher tactics meant to force the Senate into passing the elections bill.

House GOP leaders discussed the plan to merge the two bills over the weekend as Luna pushed to amend the defense bill directly.

She did not say in an interview Monday whether Johnson’s gambit would suffice: “We want it baked together, not able to be stripped out,” she said.

But the Senate is free to work its own will, and members of that chamber are likely to reject any defense bill that has the partisan elections bill attached. That would set the stage for GOP leaders to strip it out when the House and Senate hash out the differences between their competing Pentagon bills later this year.

Johnson, meanwhile, is pushing a separate plan to pass a slimmed-down version of the SAVE America Act through the party-line budget reconciliation process — an option hard-liners have all but rejected.

“I don’t think that that can be done,” Luna told reporters Monday.

He’s also facing another complication: The version of the SAVE America Act he is proposing to attach to the Pentagon bill doesn’t include the latest demands for the bill from President Donald Trump — including a near-total ban on mail voting that is opposed by many Republicans.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Congress

Top Trump officials face bipartisan questions in first all-member Iran briefings

Published

5 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Lawmakers of both parties questioned Secretary of State Marco Rubio and top Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff Monday in the first broad congressional briefings on President Donald Trump’s Iran deal.

While Democrats asked some of the sharpest questions, participants in an afternoon conference call with House members said, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) at one point pressed the administration officials on the fate of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium.

According to two people granted anonymity to disclose the private remarks, Witkoff and Rubio repeated assurances the administration has privately made to select lawmakers in prior briefings — that the goal is to negotiate a final deal that would prohibit Iran from keeping its highly enriched uranium.

The memorandum of understanding Trump signed earlier this month, they said, was meant to launch those negotiations. Witkoff, the people said, added that the technical team involved in that part of the talks was traveling from Switzerland to Qatar, where talks between the U.S. and Iran are set to happen Tuesday.

Democrats, meanwhile, pushed the administration for more details on what financial benefits Iran could reap under the memorandum — including proceeds from previously sanctioned oil sales.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) went back and forth with Rubio and Witkoff over the lifting of the oil sanctions, two other people granted anonymity on the House call said. The officials eventually cut off the conversation and ended the call.

At another point, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) raised concerns about Witkoff’s business interests in the Middle East as he’s negotiating with Iran, prompting a sharp defense from Rubio, those people said.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asked Rubio and Witkoff about the oil sanctions during a separate all-senators call Monday, saying in a statement afterward that they “confirmed to me that Iran will reap billions in oil revenue while retaining dangerous leverage over the Strait of Hormuz.”

“If this is the administration’s defense behind closed doors, Secretary Rubio should make it under oath, in public, before the Foreign Relations Committee,” Schumer added, calling the briefing “delayed, deficient, and devoid of details.”

An administration official granted anonymity to speak candidly countered on Schumer’s characterization, noting that he had previously gotten a briefing of the deal as part of a group of top leaders engaged on national security matters. Schumer, the official said, had the opportunity to ask multiple follow-up questions on the Senate call.

A separate group of White House officials briefed top congressional leaders and key committee chairs in a classified briefing in the Capitol later Monday.

The administration has faced bipartisan skepticism over multiple provisions of the memorandum of understanding — particularly the lifting of oil sanctions and a $300 billion reconstruction fund that many Senate Republicans fear will help fuel Iran’s military and regional proxies.

Rubio and Witkoff sought to ease concerns about the slow reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — the critical trade route whose closure has sparked higher fuel and fertilizer costs. Both officials said more mine removal is required, and Witkoff indicated that Iran broke the terms of the Trump-signed deal by launching a drone attack on a passing ship over the weekend.

They also sought to assure lawmakers that Iran has received no money under the memorandum — especially not directly from American sources. Administration officials have previously pledged in smaller briefings that the reconstruction fund won’t include U.S. funds.

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) called the Senate briefing a “productive conversation” but said “much of what I heard today is similar to what I heard last week” during a dinner at Vice President JD Vance’s residence.