A House Republican plan to keep the federal government open past Friday by putting most agencies' funding on autopilot includes extra money for the Pentagon to cover a junior enlisted pay raise scheduled to take effect next month.
The stopgap spending measure, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, would fund the government through the end of the fiscal year -- Sept. 30 -- by, for the most part, simply extending last year's funding levels.
If approved, it would be the first time the Pentagon has operated under a CR for an entire fiscal year. But the bill aims to mitigate some of the biggest harms to the military from a CR by adding extra Pentagon funds for personnel, weapons buying and other costs that grow year over year.
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The CR would also give the Department of Veterans Affairs extra money for its Toxic Exposures Fund to cover a medical budget shortfall that was first identified by the Biden administration last year.
If the bill is not approved by the end of the day Friday, the government would shut down at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. For the military, a shutdown would mean troops have to continue working without collecting a paycheck until new government funding is approved, unless Congress passes separate legislation to allow paychecks to continue.
The funding deadline and Congress' debate over how best to keep the government open comes as President Donald Trump has been ignoring funding laws in order to slash the size of the government.
Trump has endorsed the CR as a way to give his administration more time to act unilaterally.
"All Republicans should vote (please!) yes next week," Trump said Saturday in a post on the social media platform he owns, Truth Social. "Great things are coming for America, and I am asking you all to give us a few months to get us through to September so we can continue to put the country's 'financial house' in order."
The Pentagon typically loathes CRs because they force the military to operate on the previous year's budget while facing increased costs. For example, by law, troops get a pay raise every January regardless of whether new funding has been approved, meaning, under a CR, the military services have to cut other personnel dollars such as retention bonuses in order to fund the pay raise.
That issue could be even more pronounced come April because junior enlisted service members are slated to get another 10% raise on top of the 4.5% raise they got in January under a defense policy bill Congress approved in December.
But the CR released over the weekend includes extra military personnel funding to cover the added costs of the junior enlisted pay raise so that the services would not have to scramble to find money for the pay raise elsewhere.
"This straightforward continuing resolution ensures the government remains open and working for Americans," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said in a statement Saturday. "It maintains critical services for our constituents and provides the largest pay raise for our brave junior enlisted heroes since President Reagan."
Overall, the CR would allocate $6 billion more for defense funding this year than last year. In addition to the extra personnel funding, the bill also includes some extra money for weapons buying and operations and maintenance accounts.
The CR would also add $6 billion to the VA's Toxic Exposures Fund, the pot of money created by the PACT Act.
Last year, the Biden administration informed Congress the VA was facing a $6.6 billion shortfall in its medical budget, driven by higher-than-expected enrollment because of the PACT Act and increased costs for medical equipment and prescription drugs. Some of the shortfall was also attributed to staffing costs, and the Trump administration is now firing thousands of VA employees.
When the Biden administration announced the shortfall, Republicans bristled at what they described as shoddy accounting by the administration.
While the CR includes funding to cover the shortfall for the Toxic Exposures Fund this year, Democrats are now fuming because it does not include money for the fund in 2026.
"Veterans will suffer with higher housing costs, poorer quality of health care at the VA, and no advance funding for treatment from exposure to toxic chemicals," Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement Saturday.
The VA typically receives some of its funding a year in advance in order to shield veterans' health care and benefits from government shutdown fights. While 2026 funding for the Toxic Exposures Fund isn't in this CR, Congress will have more opportunities to fund it when it debates the 2026 budget.
Trump's endorsement suggests most Republicans will support the CR, though at least two -- Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Rand Paul, both of Kentucky -- have come out in opposition as of Monday morning.
House Democratic leadership has balked at the CR, though Democratic votes are not needed in the lower chamber if Massie is the only Republican opposing it.
Democratic leadership in the Senate, where at least eight Democrats need to support the bill in order to get it to the necessary 60-vote threshold, assuming every Republican besides Paul supports it, has not taken a position on the bill.
But some influential Senate Democrats have slammed it for not doing anything to try to prevent Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, who heads the White House advisory group known as the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, that is shredding the government, from continuing to take a hatchet to agencies and personnel.
"Congress -- not Trump or Musk -- should decide through careful bipartisan negotiations how to invest in our states and districts -- and whether critical programs that support students, veterans, families and patients get funded or not," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement Saturday about the CR.
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