Pressure grows on Johnson to hold vote on military pay
Pressure is rising on House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to call the House back in session for a vote on ensuring military pay during the shutdown.
President Trump said a standalone military pay bill “probably will happen” in remarks to reporters Wednesday, while bipartisan legislation allowing service members to be paid amid the shutdown is gaining momentum in the House.
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), the chair of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, signed on to the Pay Our Troops Act this week.
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“We can have policy and political fights in Congress, but we simply can’t ask service members to put themselves in harm’s way without paying them,” Calvert said in a statement to The Hill on Thursday. “It should be a red line for anyone who cares about our national security and our troops.”
The California Republican added the “best course of action” would be for Democrats to pass the GOP’s “clean” continuing resolution (CR), which they have refused to do without concessions on extending ObamaCare subsidies.
The bipartisan legislation, introduced by Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.), has support from 148 House members, including 104 Republicans and 44 Democrats.
Johnson insisted Thursday morning that Democrats are to blame if military members miss their paychecks starting Oct. 15, which would affect more than 1.3 million active duty service members. Some quality-of-life and family readiness programs have also been curtailed by the shutdown.
During an appearance on C-SPAN, Johnson took a call from a woman who identified herself as a GOP military mom with two “medically fragile children” and said that her family would be devastated by a pause in pay because “we live paycheck to paycheck.”
“I am begging you to pass this legislation. My kids could die,” the caller told Johnson.
The Speaker expressed his sympathies and argued Senate Democrats are at fault since they have blocked the Republican-led continuing resolution, which would reopen the government through Nov. 21.
“This is what keeps me up at night. The Republicans are the ones delivering for you. We had a vote to pay the troops. It was the continuing resolution three weeks ago,” Johnson said. “The Democrats are the ones preventing you from getting a check.”
Also due to miss a paycheck are several thousand Guardsmen and reservists on federal active duty and those in the full-time Active Guard Reserve program, which include Guardsmen deployed by the Trump administration to such U.S. cities as Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., St. Louis, and Chicago, and to the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Right now troops cannot count on being paid their mid-month check,” said John Goheen, a spokesperson for the National Guard Association of the United States (NGAUS), a lobbying group that advocates for members of the service. “That’s going to cause some anxiety for some people, especially some of the younger troops that are probably living largely paycheck to paycheck or counting on that check to pay a car bill or rent or something like that.”
He added that the issue also detracts from service members’ focus on their missions as it “affects their attention when they’ve got to try to explain to folks back home when the money is going to be in the account, and they don’t know when the money is going to be in the account.“
NGAUS, along with the Adjutants General Association, the Reserve Organization of America and the Enlisted Association of the National Guard — which combined advocate for nearly 1 million National Guard and Reserve members — voiced those concerns to key lawmakers earlier this week in several letters.
“Asking service members to report for duty with no pay degrades morale and creates hardship on military families,” the four organizations wrote, urging lawmakers to “swiftly pass” Kiggans’s legislation and its Senate companion bill.
Johnson said earlier this week that he would be open to calling the lower chamber back to vote on the stand-alone legislation to allow air-traffic controllers and service members to be paid.
But on Wednesday, the Speaker indicated opposition to bringing the bill for a vote, saying Democrats are “clamoring to get back here and have another vote, because some of them want to get on record and say they were paying the troops.”
Asked if he would encourage Congress to pass stand-alone legislation to pay service members, Trump on Wednesday replied: “Yeah, that probably will happen.”
“We have to worry about it yet. That’s a long time. You know what one week is for me, an eternity? One week for me is a long time; we’ll take care of it. Our military is always going to be taken care of,” the president told reporters at the White House.
During a Thursday Cabinet meeting, Trump ripped Democrats for blocking the passage of the GOP-led CR, saying the shutdown is causing “pain and suffering for hard-working Americans, including our military, our air traffic controllers and impoverished mothers, people with young children, people that have to live not greatest of lives.”
The White House did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment on Trump’s position on the Pay Our Troops Act.
When asked on Thursday if Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth supports Kiggans’s bill, the Pentagon said the best course of action is for the Senate to pass the CR.
“While the Department appreciates Congress’ efforts to ensure active-duty service members do not have a gap in their pay, the best action Congress can take is to pass a clean Continuing Resolution and end the Democrat Shutdown so that the entirety of the Department and federal government are at full strength,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said in a statement to The Hill.
Senate GOP leaders are expressing opposition to the idea of calling the House back to vote on the stand-alone bill.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) hammered Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who argued that the Democratic Party’s position gets better “every day” amid the ongoing shutdown.
“I mean, do you think it’s getting better for the troops that aren’t going to get paid, the air traffic controllers that aren’t going to get paid, for the Border Patrol agents that aren’t going to get paid,” Thune said during a Thursday morning appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “This isn’t a game.”
In a Wednesday letter, Democratic Reps. Derek Tran (Calif.) and Gabe Vasquez (N.M.) pressed Johnson to bring the lower chamber back before next Wednesday to vote on a bill that ensures troops are paid.
“Our troops put their lives on the line for our freedom. They have our backs; Congress needs to have theirs. I’m proud to fight for our troops to get the pay that they have earned. It’s not just the right thing to do — it’s essential for the safety of our country,” Tran said Wednesday.
Johnson hammered Democrats Thursday morning as a dozen of the party’s lawmakers are readying a letter for him to demand a vote on the stand-alone bill.
“You know why they are, because they all voted on the record three weeks ago to stop paying for the troops. They’re desperate to try to get on record, but that will be a show vote for Democrats. They do not care about it,” Johnson said. “They demonstrated that with their votes. Look at what they do and how they vote, not what they said.”
Ellen Mitchell contributed to the report.