Braxton Taylor
Troop pay will be protected and money to cover an upcoming pay raise for junior enlisted service members will be secure after Congress approved an extension of government funding through September.
The Senate voted 54-46 to approve a stopgap spending bill known as a continuing resolution, or CR, on Friday evening, just hours before a potential government shutdown would begin. The House approved the CR earlier this week; it now awaits President Donald Trump’s expected signature.
Government funding was set to expire at the end of the day Friday, meaning the government would have shut down at 12:01 a.m. Saturday without congressional action.
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The bill was written entirely by House Republicans, and Trump backed the CR as a way to enable his administration to continue its unilateral cuts to the federal government.
“Great things are coming for America, and I am asking you all to give us a few months to get us through to September so we can continue to put the country’s ‘financial house’ in order,” Trump posted on social media last weekend, urging Republicans to support the bill.
The CR’s passage was in doubt for most of the week because at least eight Democrats needed to join with Republicans to vote to advance it in the Senate. A procedural vote called a cloture motion requires 60 votes. Republicans hold 53 seats, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., came out in opposition to the bill early in the week.
But on Thursday evening, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., announced he would back the cloture motion, arguing that a shutdown would allow Trump to cause more harm than a CR would. Schumer’s decision gave a strong signal the CR would pass, and ultimately nine other Democrats joined Schumer to advance the bill in the procedural vote.
“While the CR bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse,” Schumer, who voted against final passage even though he supported cloture, said on the Senate floor Thursday night.
In a government shutdown, troops continue working without getting paid unless Congress passes separate legislation to allow paychecks to continue during the shutdown — making shutdowns anathema to the Pentagon.
While funding will continue now, the approval of the bill also means this will be the first time the Pentagon will operate under a CR for the entire fiscal year.
The Pentagon typically hates CRs because they force the military to operate under the previous year’s budget while facing increased costs. In general, CRs simply extend existing funding levels, though lawmakers sometimes include some extra funding.
In this CR, Congress sought to mitigate some of the fallout for the military by adding $6 billion above last year’s budget for the Pentagon.
In particular, Congress added funding for military personnel accounts for a 10% pay raise that junior enlisted service members are slated to get in April. The junior enlisted pay raise would have taken effect without extra funding being approved in the CR because Congress authorized the raise in the defense policy bill passed in December, but the military would have had to raid other personnel funds such as for retention bonuses in order to cover the increased paychecks.
Despite the CR including some extra Pentagon funding, top officers testified to Congress this week that it will still have some harmful effects on the military.
The CR also includes an extra $6 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs to make up for a shortfall in the Toxic Exposures Fund that was first identified by the Biden administration last year.
In addition to passing the CR, the Senate also voted Friday evening on an amendment offered by Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., that would have reinstated all veterans fired from the federal government by the Trump administration.
Thousands of federal workers, including thousands of veterans, have been fired as part of Trump’s sweeping efforts to slash the government.
Duckworth’s amendment failed entirely along party lines, with all 47 Democrats supporting and all 53 Republicans opposing.
Related: GOP Plan to Avert Government Shutdown Would Fund Next Month’s Junior Enlisted Pay Raise
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