Trump to sailors on pay held back by shutdown: ‘Do not worry about it’
President Trump on Sunday told Navy sailors not to “worry about” their paychecks that are being held back by the current government shutdown.
“As your commander in chief, I will always stand for you. I promise you that,” Trump said at a celebration of the Navy’s 250th anniversary. “You know that, that’s why you voted for me in numbers that nobody’s ever seen before. And I want you to know that despite the current Democrat-induced shutdown, we will get our service members every last penny.”
“Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it. Don’t worry about it. Do not worry about it, it’s all coming,” the president added.
The federal government formally went into a shutdown Wednesday in the wake of congressional leaders failing to come to a deal on a stopgap spending bill, leaving lawmakers struggling on how to move forward.
Federal employees, including service members, have either been furloughed or are working without pay until the shutdown ends. All will receive back pay at that point.
Multiple federal departments have put out messaging blaming Democrats for the shutdown, with a message on the Department of Health and Human Services’s (HHS) website saying that “mission-critical activities of HHS will continue during the Democrat-led government shutdown.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Sunday said his chamber “did its job” in the recent government funding battle. Last month, the House passed what Johnson described as a “clean” and “nonpartisan” stopgap spending bill that would fund the government through late November.
“The House did its job,” Johnson said in an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “The reason that House Republicans are home working in their districts, and I suspect House Democrats should be as well, is because we did that.”
“We passed a bipartisan, very clean continuing resolution a couple of weeks back now, and sent it to the Senate.”
The Senate returns to Washington on Monday and will vote again on two funding bills that could reopen the government. Both failed twice last week.