The issue threatens to renew chaos at airports as lawmakers remain divided over a deal to end the two-month shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.
Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, said on Tuesday that his department would run out of money to pay employees the first week of May if Congress failed to reach a deal to reopen the department.
“The money is going extremely fast,” Mr. Mullin said during an interview with “Fox & Friends.” “The president can’t do another executive order for us to use money, because there’s no more money there.”
Missed paychecks could renew chaos at airports as lawmakers remain divided over a deal to end the two-month shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. The threat of them also ramps up political pressure on Congress to unlock funding, which had eased after President Trump signed memos calling on his administration to use existing money to pay all department employees, including Transportation Security Administration officers.
Mr. Mullin said the money to fund paychecks was drawn from a portion of Mr. Trump’s signature domestic policy bill, which gave the department more than $170 billion over four years to carry out the president’s immigration crackdown. But he said that payroll costs were amounting to more than $1.6 billion every two weeks, and that available funding for salaries would dry up after this month.
The dysfunction has frustrated many department employees who have been dealing with financial uncertainty since the shutdown began. More than 90 percent of the department’s roughly 260,000 workers are considered essential, meaning that most employees continue to work without pay.
The impact of missed paychecks was most visible at airports last month, as hundreds of T.S.A. officers quit and thousands called out of work. The staffing crisis, which led to hourslong security lines at some airports and missed flights, alleviated after T.S.A. employees began receiving back pay in late March.