Copyright Star Tribune
By paying troops and law enforcement officials, the president stretched the limits of his spending powers, posing a fresh test to Congress. The New York Times October 21, 2025 at 9:26PM President Donald Trump speaks with reporters aboard Air Force One after departing West Palm Beach, Fla., en route to Joint Base Andrews, Md., on Sunday, Oct. 19, 2025. In an escalation of its campaign to wrest control of the budget away from Congress, the Trump administration has during the shutdown impasse taken unorthodox steps to reprogram billions of dollars in enacted spending. (HAIYUN JIANG/The New York Times) For weeks, Democrats have rejected a Republican proposal that would reopen the government into November because it does not extend a set of expiring health subsidies, which help millions of Americans pay for insurance with prices set to skyrocket soon. The two parties have made no progress toward resolving that impasse, while Trump has been all but absent in trying to broker a deal. After a series of failed votes in the Senate, lawmakers in the chamber this week are set to consider a backup plan, which would restore pay for military service members and other federal workers who serve in vital federal roles. But some key Democrats have already said they would reject the approach, describing it as limited and insufficient. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, criticized the bill Monday as “more like a political ploy to pick and choose, giving Donald Trump discretion, which employees should be compensated and which employees should not be compensated.” “All employees should be compensated,” Jeffries continued at a news conference, “and that will happen when we reopen the government.” For the moment, federal workers are sorted into three categories. They are furloughed, forced to work without pay or essentially exempt from the shutdown, because their salaries come from funds already enacted by Congress. Furloughed workers, in particular, number into the hundreds of thousands. Since the shutdown began, Trump has signaled he may try to deny these employees automatic back pay, even though the president signed a law during his first term that would provide it. Tony Romm
