President Trump pays TSA employees, but where does the money come from?

After weeks of long lines at airports and bickering in Congress, Transportation Security Administration employees began receiving paychecks earlier this week, thanks to President Donald Trump’s executive order.

President Trump’s move to unilaterally pay airport security workers will provide a temporary reprieve, bypassing Congress’s authority over federal spending under the U.S. Constitution. Negotiations over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which has been closed since February, have largely stalled while Congress has been in recess for two weeks.

This salary raises a series of questions about where the money Trump is spending comes from. How much is available? And if Congress doesn’t reach an agreement soon, how long can President Trump continue to pay TSA employees?

President Trump’s executive order directs the Secretary of Homeland Security and the White House Office of Management and Budget to “use funds that are reasonably and logically related to TSA operations to provide TSA employees with the compensation and benefits that would have accrued to them but for the Democratic-led DHS shutdown.”

The Trump administration acknowledged that the money came from last year’s Republican tax and spending bill, called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

The Trump administration acknowledged that the money being used to pay TSA employees comes from last year’s Republican tax and spending bill, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“Similar to the actions taken during the first Democratic shutdown (i.e., payments to the military), President Trump has determined that Congressional Democrats have created an emergency that cannot be allowed to continue,” a senior administration official said in an email.

The White House has not said exactly where the money will come from in the tax and spending bill, but Bobby Cogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, said there is only one section the administration could cite.

Buried deep within the more than 300-page bill is a provision that sets aside $10 billion “for cost reimbursement for activities supporting the Department of Homeland Security’s mission to protect the nation’s borders.”

“They do have a lot of money, it’s a huge slush fund, but they can’t (just) spend it on anything,” Kogan said.

President Trump has been trying to get certain federal employees paid. During last fall’s government shutdown, he leveraged unused research and development funds and $130 million in donor contributions to pay for the U.S. military. President Trump did not identify the individual donor, but The New York Times reported that it was billionaire Timothy Mellon, a Trump supporter.

Democrats have also said they want to pay TSA workers, but President Trump’s recent unilateral action to pay federal employees without Congress first appropriating the funds has raised alarm.

House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said in a statement on the day Trump announced the plan: “I am pleased that the administration has finally chosen to pay these workers after 41 days of not paying them. The administration must now explain what funds it is using to pay these workers after falsely claiming it cannot pay them.”

Kogan believes most of the $10 billion in DHS funds from last year’s tax and spending package is still available. He estimated that the cost of funding the TSA could be about $140 million per week, meaning the White House could continue funding the agency for a year without running out of money.

But should you?

Devin O’Connor, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said there were big questions about the legality of the move.

“The government is not providing clear enough information about what they’re doing publicly for anyone to be able to tell whether what they’re doing is legal or illegal,” O’Connor said. “They’re not claiming it in public.”

“When Congress provided that $10 billion, it’s clear that there was no intention that that money would be used to pay TSA employees,” O’Connor said.

Kogan was more edgy. He sees this as a clear violation of anti-deficiency laws, an 1800s law that prohibits federal agencies from spending money not appropriated by Congress.

When asked to respond to accusations of violating the law, the White House said it referred it to the Office of Management and Budget. OMB officials defended the legality of the funding in an email, citing a Justice Department memo that said agencies “have significant discretion in determining whether expenditures further the agency’s authorized purposes and therefore constitute an appropriate use of general or lump sum appropriations.”

Kogan said no one has ever been charged under the Deficiency Prevention Act. And while Congressional Democrats typically want to hold President Trump accountable, given the political unpopularity of long lines at airports, they are unlikely to object to the move and risk suspending pay for TSA employees.

“No one has a position. No one can stop this. Similarly, no one had a position to stop President Trump from illegally paying for the military last time,” Kogan said. “This will be one of his vast illegal budgetary measures.”

President Trump’s executive order appears to have eased airport security wait times this week, at least for now.

DHS Acting Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Lauren Biss said in an email that “most TSA employees” received retroactive pay this week “including at least two full paychecks” for recently unpaid pay periods.

More than 500 officers have left TSA and thousands have lost their jobs as a result of inspection errors caused by the shutdown, Biss said.

“For small populations, there may be slight delays due to a variety of reasons, including financial institution processing times and direct deposit issues. We are actively working with USDA’s National Financial Center to complete processing of half of the paychecks due from Pay Period 3 as quickly as possible,” Biss said.

It’s unclear how long TSA will continue to be paid through DHS funds as Congress continues to struggle to come together for an agreement.

Last week, no senators opposed a proposal to fund all of DHS except for parts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, and it was sent to the House for final approval. The move effectively ended the lockdown and allowed the Senate to leave town for its pre-planned recess, while also easing long wait times at airports across the country ahead of the busy early April traffic period for Easter and Passover.

The deal infuriated House Republicans, who refused to consider the Senate’s compromise and instead chose to pass their own stopgap spending measure that would continue funding for the entire DHS, including ICE and CBP, through May 22 and send it back to the Senate.

By then, the Senate had already left Washington, ensuring a long shutdown. Democrats have vowed to block any policies that include funding for immigration enforcement without changing immigration practices, and senators are scattered across the country and the world during recess.

The White House has called on Congress to return from recess early, but leaders in both chambers have not indicated a plan.

In a statement Wednesday via TruthSocial, President Trump called on Republicans in Congress to use the budget reconciliation process, a procedural tool for spending bills that only requires a simple majority of the Senate to pass, to bypass Democrats and fund ICE and CBP.

“I ask that this bill be on my desk no later than June 1st. Our law enforcement officers and the American people do not have to wait until Democrats get their point across or learn the hard way through the polls,” Trump wrote.

—Megan Cassella contributed to this article.