DHS taps 'big beautiful bill' funding for Coast Guard paychecks

John M. Donnelly, CQ-Roll Call on Oct 14, 2025

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WASHINGTON — Coast Guard personnel will get paid this week despite the partial government shutdown, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.

Noem said in a social media post on Monday that her department had come up with an “innovative solution” to pay Coast Guard personnel, which she identified as funds taken out of the GOP budget reconciliation package that backers have dubbed the “one big, beautiful bill.”

“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and the One Big Beautiful Bill, the brave men and women of the US Coast Guard will not miss a paycheck this week as they continue to carry out their critical homeland security and military missions,” Noem wrote on the social platform X.

The Coast Guard confirmed Tuesday the payments would go out on Oct. 15 as previously scheduled before the shutdown, which began Oct.1. Bank deposits will land in accounts no later than Friday.

The DHS move follows other efforts by the Trump administration to ensure favored agencies and functions get special treatment during the shutdown. President Donald Trump said over the weekend that military personnel would be getting paid, which officials said would come from unspent research and development funds.

On Tuesday, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget said “law enforcement” personnel would also be paid on schedule, though they didn’t elaborate.

Meanwhile, some 2 million civilian federal workers at other agencies, including many who are still reporting to work, will continue to go without paychecks, and mass layoffs known as “reductions-in-force” will continue.

“OMB is making every preparation to batten down the hatches and ride out the Democrats’ intransigence. Pay the troops, pay law enforcement, continue the RIFs, and wait,” the White House budget office wrote in a statement posted on X.

The two parties continue to spar over expiring health insurance tax credits, with no end to the impasse in sight. Republicans want Democrats to first agree to end the shutdown, and then negotiate a health care deal; Democrats say they won’t agree without a deal on the tax credits on the table first.

‘Mission readiness’

The Coast Guard received $24.6 billion in the reconciliation package to boost “mission readiness,” mainly for procurement of cutters and aircraft as well as construction of homeports and hangars.

The money is available for obligation through fiscal 2029, though without specific “transfer authority” its not clear what legal means the department is using to shift the money to salaries.

The Coast Guard is a branch of the military, but being part of DHS has posed challenges in the past during shutdowns.

In 2018-2019, the Defense appropriations bill had already become law before the shutdown began in December. Since the Homeland Security spending bill wasn’t enacted, Coast Guard personnel went without pay for the duration of the funding lapse, which lasted 34 full days.

The other military branches are being paid on Oct. 15 out of $8 billion in unspent research and development funds, the Pentagon said over the weekend. Those accounts make funding available for two fiscal years, which in this case would extend through Sept. 30, 2026.

The March stopgap funding law provided up to $8 billion in “general transfer” authority which the Pentagon could potentially tap to move money into salaries for the troops. But that would still leave a hole in the funding lawmakers approved for R&D about seven months ago.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise R-La., told reporters Tuesday that funding subtracted to pay for troops’ salaries, as well as other purposes during the shutdown will eventually be paid back.

Scalise noted that the Agriculture Department’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children program, known as WIC, is being kept afloat via general tariff revenues.

“Ultimately, all of those funds need to be replenished,” Scalise said. “That’ll happen when the government gets reopened.”

Scalise also noted that tens of thousands of government workers are not being paid during the shutdown, which he, like Noem, blamed on Democrats.

Noem, for her part, said on X that Coast Guard personnel are on the job despite the shutdown, “defending our maritime borders, stopping the flow of deadly narcotics and illegal immigration into our country, and countering America’s adversaries around the world.”

Noem added that Trump “did not want any of our military to go without pay as a result of Democrats’ political theater, and we at DHS worked out an innovative solution to make sure that didn’t happen.”

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—Jacob Fulton and Rebecca Kheel contributed to this report.