President Donald Trump on Saturday announced that he will direct Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to “use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th” as the government shutdown nears its third week.

After the Senate failed to approve spending legislation this week, military members were preparing to go without their paychecks on Wednesday for the first time in U.S. history.

“We have identified funds to do this, and Secretary Hegseth will use them to PAY OUR TROOPS,” the president wrote in the social media post Saturday. “I will not allow the Democrats to hold our Military, and the entire Security of our Nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous Government Shutdown.”

To scrounge up enough money to pay the troops, the Pentagon is tapping into its research and development accounts to use funding Congress made available for two years, according to an OMB official. Specifically, about $8 billion is being shifted from accounts that fund military research, development, testing and evaluation efforts, according to two people familiar with the plan who were granted anonymity to discuss its details.

POLITICO previously reported that the White House was weighing options to move money around in case a congressional deal was not struck by next week’s paycheck deadline. One of those options was applying pressure on Republican leaders to put a standalone troop pay bill on the floor. But both House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune came out against that option, despite support from several congressional Republicans.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s post.

Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) — who sponsored a bipartisan bill to get troops paid — praised Trump’s move on X, saying “This is exactly what my Pay Our Troops Act was aiming to accomplish!” adding “Now it’s time to get the government open!”

Many Republicans on Capitol Hill were eager for Trump to try to find a way to pay troops as GOP leaders held firm against a standalone vote — especially the large number of GOP members with military bases in their districts.

But top Republicans for several days cautioned the White House against tapping defense money from the GOP megabill — which has already been assigned to shipbuilding and other projects.

“Hopefully, the administration, before they make a decision like that, will reach out to us,” Veterans’ Affairs Chair Mike Bost said Thursday.

But Bost said he would “love” if the White House could find some way to ensure service members didn’t miss paychecks amid the shutdown.

White House officials had considered using tariff revenue to cover the paychecks, as POLITICO reported on Friday.

There can be real repercussions for shifting funding during a government shutdown. Under the Antideficiency Act, a more than 150-year-old law enacted to prevent federal agencies from spending money Congress hasn’t appropriated, agency officials who buck those restrictions face up to two years in prison and up to $5,000 in fines.

Even before Trump’s announcement, top lawmakers were questioning the legality of other moves to tap funding during the shutdown. “They are violating the law left and right,” Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s top Democratic appropriator, told reporters on Friday about the administration’s moves to shift funding during the shutdown. “They should be fined.”

DeLauro said she trusts that the federal government’s top watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, will push back against any illegal shifting of funding during the lapse. “GAO has been under unbelievable pressure from the administration. But they stand tall, and they do their job,” she said.

The watchdog agency isn’t yet looking into it. “We do not have a request to review the current shutdown, and we do not have ongoing work on this matter,” a GAO spokesperson said in a statement.

In 2019, GAO determined that the Trump administration violated the law during the 35-day shutdown that occurred during Trump’s first presidency, by tapping recreation fees to keep National Park Service operations running and also by making SNAP payments early. The watchdog warned that any future violations would be considered “knowing and willful,” and that agency officials would face imprisonment and fines.

GAO says now, however, that the agency doesn’t know “if the facts and circumstances are the same as in our prior 2019 decision.”

Connor O’Brien and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.