A federal officer stands at a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint at Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia on Friday. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday signed a promised executive action that will pay Transportation Security Administration employees, after a deal that sought to do the same stalled in Congress.

Trump signed the action with an eye toward easing long security lines at many of the nation’s top airports.

“America’s air travel system has reached its breaking point,” Trump said in the memo authorizing the payments. He added, “I have determined that these circumstances constitute an emergency situation compromising the Nation’s security.”

Trump said his administration would use “funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations” for the payments.

In a statement Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said TSA workers “should begin seeing paychecks as early as Monday.”

On Thursday night, as lawmakers grappled with the issue, a senior administration official said the money would come from the tax bill Trump signed last year. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly. They compared the move to actions Trump took during a past shutdown to pay troops.

Trump’s action came after House Republicans rejected a Senate-passed bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, a revolt that risks delaying a resolution to the funding impasse now in its 42nd day that has created long lines at many of the nation’s airports.

“This gambit that was done last night is a joke,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday.

Johnson said that instead House Republicans would seek to pass a bill that would fund the entire department at until May 22. He also said he had spoken with Trump about the House Republican plan and the president supports it.

House Republicans are angry that the bill passed early Friday by the Senate does not fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol. Democrats refused to fund those departments without changes to immigration enforcement practices.

“We’re going to do something different,” Johnson said, challenging the Senate to take up the House’s continuing resolution on Monday, assuming it does pass the House, which is uncertain.

But Senators have already left town after acting in the early morning hours to end the partial shutdown, so it would take time for them to return if the House ends up passing a different measure. And Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a social media post that the 60-day stopgap measure being considered in the House would be “dead on arrival in the Senate, and Republicans know it.”

That would mean the DHS shutdown that has jammed airports and imposed financial hardship on thousands of federal workers would continue for the foreseeable future.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said party members are prepared to support the Senate bill.

“This could end, and should end, today,” Jeffries said. “There is a bipartisan bill that has been sent over from the Senate that would reopen the non-controversial parts of the Department of Homeland Security.”

The Senate deal came together as pressure mounted to resolve the stalemate before TSA workers were set to miss another paycheck. After Trump said Thursday he would sign an order to immediately pay the TSA agents, senators pushed ahead with more negotiations where Republicans didn’t get the funding they wanted for ICE and Democrats didn’t get the reforms they wanted.