Posted on 10/20/2025 12:59:46 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Members of Congress appreciate the political cover but don’t love how the White House is circumventing Capitol Hill’s power of the purse yet again.
On Friday the White House sent lawmakers a five-page document detailing its argument for why the president has the power to use funding for a different purpose than Congress mandated in law. The bulleted list of talking points cites examples like then-President George Washington tapping military funding in 1794 for the militia to respond to the Whiskey Rebellion.
But administration officials have not relayed how much other money they believe could be used to pay troops when the next paychecks are due on Oct. 31.
The White House is already hunting for any available money to address other funding shortfalls during the shutdown to support politically popular programs. That includes options to pay at least a segment of federal workers, and potentially reopen key loans for struggling farmers amid quiet pressure from Senate GOP Leader John Thune and other farm-state lawmakers, according to two Trump officials and two senior Hill Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter.
White House officials also need to figure out how to manage the dilemma over SNAP, the country’s largest food assistance program that serves 42 million low-income Americans, which will start to run out of funds Nov. 1.
The federal government’s top watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, typically weighs in on the legality of shifting funding during a government shutdown. When Trump was president during the last, lengthy funding lapse that ended in early 2019, GAO concluded that his administration twice violated the law with its funding moves, warning that officials would face fines and up to two years in prison for future violations.
This time around, however, GAO has yet to receive any lawmaker requests to review Trump’s maneuver to pay members of...
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
The Dims should make it LOUD and CLEAR that they hate Trump paying troops.
Translation: DemocRATz don’t give a shi...er...give a Dorkbama about our troops. They never have, and they never will. May all the woke asshole troops get sent over to serve sewer duty in deserted base that the Biden-hole gave to the religion of awfulness.
Making sure our military gets paid during a RAT shutdown is a “power grab”?
How is it a power grab if it’s legal
Does politico ever dream of investigating how certain congresspeople live like Kings?
They show their hate for our military every election, when they send gangs of their lawyers to court, to challenge each and every military ballot sent in from overseas.
Pay the military. Screw SNAP.
It's ironic, because the more the Dems try to box in Trump, the more Presidential powers he restores.
I can't see to many normies complaining about SNAP being cut off.
Nothing more infuriating than seeing some house hippo using her EBT to pay for a cart full of groceries while I count pennies at the supermarket.
would be awesome for the Dems to sue Trump to stop him from paying the troops ... but even Dems aren’t THAT stupid [or they would have sued by now] ...
Hail to our Chief. Pay for our military is a MUST. We know the demoncRATS don’t want to pay our military since the demoncRATS as a general rule are anti-military.
This is the GOP’s chance to grow a pair and take on the Dims. Not only is Schumer blocking military pay, but EBT cards and other welfare payments will start stopping in just 10 days. The GOP and Pres. Trump need to start agitating the military and poor to get them to turn on the Dims.
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