As the government shutdown heads into its seventh week, leaders from four of the military’s professional advocacy groups came together to call on Congress to re-open the government, provide backpay to civilians who are looking at another missed paycheck, and pass legislation so that in the event of another shutdown, Defense Department civilians won’t be forced to work without pay.
As of Wednesday, the government will have been shut down for about 13 percent of the fiscal year. At a time when the Pentagon is “laser-focused” on lethality, the department is hemorrhaging readiness, with training and maintenance hours lost due to lack of funding. Even as the House prepares to vote on a Senate continuing resolution to at least get some money flowing again, the services are looking at a long road to recovery.
“We get a CR, which doesn’t really let us catch up or exceed,” Burt Field, president of the Air and Space Forces Association, told reporters. “We’re in a never-ending spiral of not being able to get where you need to be.”
Senior military leaders beat the drum against continuing resolutions every year, pleading with Congress for a full appropriations bill that lets them increase operations, training, and maintenance over the previous year. But the prospect of another CR to patch over more than a month shut down means the services will have to pick and choose which missions to prioritize even more than usual.
“You’ve only got so many days to do a certain window, and the missions don’t stop,” said Les Smith, vice president for leadership and education at the Association of the U.S. Army. “So how we make sure you put those back on the schedule is important for each one of the missions that we’ve asked the service members to do.”
A National Guard unit is preparing to deploy at the beginning of 2026, Frank McGinn, the president of the National Guard Association of the United States, told reporters. But the dual-status technicians who do the maintenance for that unit aren’t able to get their equipment ready.
“It’s going to affect the timeliness of their impending deployment. So that just makes it more challenging,” he said. “The availability of ranges—they’re compressed to begin with anyway, especially from a reserve component, there’s not as much availability. So you have a backlog there for training ranges and such.”
The Guard has more than 30,000 of these dual-status technicians, who are technically civilians but are required to maintain active reserve military status in order to do their jobs. They haven’t been paid since the end of September.
“We need to fix this. We need Congress to pass protections for our uniformed and technician personnel,” McGinn added. “Should we face a shutdown in the future, the stress and uncertainty of our people, families, and employers over the last six weeks can never happen again. Our people took an oath to uphold their duty. We call on Congress to do the same.”
During previous shutdowns, Congress has passed emergency exceptions to keep Defense Department personnel paid. Advocacy groups are hoping that, should it happen again, there will be a law in place to make sure service members and military civilians receive their paychecks. But the Pay Our Troops Act, which was introduced on Sept. 16, hasn’t seen a vote.
“So you know, every day that the shutdown continues, it really kind of signals to those who volunteer that their service is conditional, so that’s why we have to get this government back on target, get our folks paid and back on track,” said John Hashem, executive director of the Reserve Organization of America.
There’s also concern that the uncertainty will cause DOD civilians to resign, Field said. However, that concern may not be shared by the current administration, since it has made whittling down the workforce one of its goals.
“If Congress has congressional duties to do and debates to have and arguments to win. That’s fine. That’s how their institution is built, and that’s what they do,” Field added. “But they do not have to do that on the backs of service members, civilians, and their families. So they want to have these discussions and have these arguments and put their positions forward. Go ahead, but keep the government open while they’re doing it. It’s as simple as that.”
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