Written By Lexx Thornton
Active-duty military personnel will stop receiving pay by November 15th if Congress and the White House fail to reach an agreement to end the government shutdown, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned.Â
The nearly four-week-long shutdown has already furloughed approximately 750,000 federal workers and forced hundreds of thousands of others to work without pay. To ensure the roughly 1.3 million active service members continued to receive their checks, the Trump administration resorted to exceptional measures.Â
This involved moving existing Pentagon funds and taking the unusual step of accepting a $130 million donation from a private donor to bridge the funding gap.Â
However, Bessent confirmed on October 26th that this financial maneuvering has exhausted its limits. “I think we’ll be able to pay them beginning in November. But by November 15, our troops and service members who are willing to risk their lives aren’t going to be able to get paid,” he said on CBS News.Â
The political stalemate is further complicated by timing. With President Donald Trump out of the country for much of the current week on a trip to Asia, little progress is expected in the immediate future to resolve the closure. The government shutdown is now the second longest in U.S. history, surpassed only by the 35-day shutdown that occurred earlier during the Trump administration.Â
