By Tom Ozimek
Contributing Writer
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday that the Treasury Department is adjusting its payment processes so active-duty service members can continue to be paid during the government shutdown.
Bessent’s remarks, made in a Monday interview on Fox Business, follow a pledge by President Donald Trump, who said over the weekend that he had directed the Pentagon to use “all available funds” to keep paying troops during the shutdown ahead of a looming Oct. 15 military payday.
While Trump said that the funds for this purpose had been “identified,” he did not specify their source, leading to speculation whether the White House would tap mandatory spending streams or accounts expanded under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act or if there were other means to access the money. Bessent has now clarified that there would be a “shuffle” in spending priorities in order to make the payroll.
“We’re having to prioritize payments,” Bessent said on Fox Business on Monday. “We are having to hold back on some payments so that our brave men and women in the U.S. military can get paid. So we are having to shuffle things around.”
Bessent’s statement stands in some contrast to a view expressed by former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during an earlier government spending limit standoff, in which she said that Treasury systems were not designed to prioritize certain payments over others.
“Treasury systems have all been built to pay all of our bills when they’re due and on time, and not to prioritize one form of spending over another,” Yellen told reporters in January 2023.
Bessent’s remarks about there being funds in the U.S. Treasury to pay troops build on Vice President JD Vance’s comments on Sunday on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, where Vance said that the Trump administration is taking some “non-conventional” actions in order to pay servicemembers during the shutdown.
“We are confident we have identified the legal pathways in order to do this,” Vance said, adding that “some of it will come from tightening the belts in other areas” but “a lot of this will come from incoming revenues to the Internal Revenue Service — tariff revenue, but also income-tax revenue — that is going to make it possible for us to pay our troops.”
The Trump administration’s assurances come as the Oct. 15 military payday has come into focus as a politically sensitive flashpoint of the funding standoff, as, unlike civilian employees, U.S. troops are not automatically guaranteed backpay under current law.
Some Democrats have questioned whether it is legally permissible — absent congressional authorization — to pay the military during the shutdown. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he believes that “to pay the military during a shutdown would require legislation” and maneuvers such as repurposing funds are “probably not” legal.
In his Sunday interview on Fox News, Vance said that Trump’s “decisive action on tariffs” has ensured that Treasury has enough money coming in to pay the military.
“It is one of the critical things that we’ve done, of course, to reshore America’s industrial base, to create good jobs in the United States of America,” Vance said, adding that Trump’s tariff policies have given the administration the “financial flexibility so that we can keep on as many essential services as possible, including, most importantly, paying the troops.”
