During a press conference on Capitol Hill this morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and other GOP leaders blamed Democrats for the impact of the government shutdown on military pay, which will lapse next week unless federal funding is restored.
“Starting next week, American service members, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, are going to miss a full paycheck if Democrats don’t end this shutdown by Monday,” Johnson said.
Johnson added that Trump “is working on ways that he may have as well to ensure that troops are paid,” but didn’t elaborate on what that option might be.
“The Republican Party stands for paying the troops,” Johnson said. “The Democrats are the ones that are demonstrating over and over and over now eight times that they don’t want troops to be paid.”
The Senate has held eight votes on Democratic and Republican short-term spending bills, but those measures have failed to advance. Democrats are demanding a funding bill include an extension of expiring Obamacare subsidies, while Republicans have proposed just including current funding levels, without addressing the subsidies.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., also criticized Democrats for the funding impasse.
“We know roughly at least 1 in 3 of every service member in America lives paycheck to paycheck,” he said at the morning news conference. “Now, should they get solace in knowing that they’re risking their lives, some of them overseas, while their families are here, and on Monday, when we get to the date where paychecks would be cut, the government will still be shut down, and they won’t even be getting a paycheck?”
Some Democratic House lawmakers have called on Johnson to bring the House back into session to vote on a bill to allow troops to be paid throughout the shutdown. The speaker is refusing to do so, saying troops will be paid if Senate Democrats vote for a House-passed GOP short-term spending bill to reopen the government.