Active service members may start going without pay if a deal to end the government shutdown isn’t reached soon, leaders in Washington are warning.
“We were able to pay the military employees from excess funds at the Pentagon, middle of this month,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that aired on Sunday. “I think we’ll be able to pay them beginning in November. But by Nov. 15, our troops and service members who are willing to risk their lives aren’t going to be able to get paid. What an embarrassment.”
If the shutdown hasn’t concluded by that date, it would be the longest the U.S. has ever seen—by a good margin. That dubious distinction is currently held by the most recent shutdown, which occurred during President Donald Trump’s first term and lasted 34 days. The ongoing shutdown, now in its fourth week after beginning on Oct. 1, is already the second longest, and still has no clear endpoint in sight.
Others have suggested the federal government’s ability to pay the troops could be in question even sooner than Nov. 15.
The last payday for service members was Oct. 15. Trump signed a memorandum that day directing the federal government to pay active service members with any funds “that remain available for expenditure.”
But it’s unclear if this memorandum applies to the next scheduled payday, which is approaching on Oct. 31. And House Speaker Mike Johnson, when asked if service members would receive paychecks later this week, said on Monday that “we’re not 100% sure.”
“I do know the Administration and everybody is bending over backwards to try to figure that out, but I don’t know the final analysis yet,” Johnson said.
On Thursday, Senate Democrats rejected a Republican-backed bill that would have paid active service members and other federal staffers who are being mandated to work during the shutdown, meaning that troops may not receive pay this week. By law, federal employees are guaranteed back pay once a government shutdown ends, but the bill was intended to provide pay for those working in the interim.
While some Democrats broke party ranks to vote for the bill, others argued that it would give the Trump Administration too much power to pick and choose which federal workers get paid and which don’t during the shutdown.
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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the Republican-backed bill a “ruse” that could end up extending the shutdown.
“We will not give Donald Trump a license to play politics with people’s livelihoods,” he said.
Instead, Democrats supported a bill that would pay all federal employees and contractors. But Republicans sank the legislation.
“Republicans are hell-bent on letting Trump pick winners and losers here, but every federal worker, servicemember, and federal contractor deserves to get paid,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat behind that bill, said in a statement.
Last week, the President announced that his Administration received an anonymous private donation of $130 million to help pay troops during the shutdown. Trump didn’t reveal the name of the person behind the donation, but the New York Times reported that billionaire Timothy Mellon was the private donor in question. According to the outlet, the federal government’s budget for the year requested about $600 billion in total military compensation. With more than 1.3 million active troops, the $130 million donation would come out to about $100 a service member, the Times reported.
Earlier this month, Trump suggested that some federal workers “don’t deserve to be taken care of” during the shutdown—a controversial remark that indicated that his Administration is considering denying back pay to thousands of furloughed employees once the government reopens. An Administration official told TIME at the time that a new legal analysis from the White House claimed furloughed workers are not entitled to back pay when they return, apparently contradicting a law Trump signed in 2019. If it does go down that path, it’s unclear if the Administration would seek to withhold back pay from active service members, given its efforts so far to continue paying them during the shutdown.
