Tax refunds will be paid despite the ongoing government shutdown, the acting White House budget director announced Monday. “We’re going to continue to take steps like that to mitigate the impact,” Vice President Mike Pence said of the refunds, according to The Wall Street Journal. The decision will allow hundreds of billions of dollars to flow to American tax payers once filing opens later this month—if the shutdown lasts that long. The administration is trying to make the shutdown as “painless as possible consistent with the law,” Russell Vought, the acting OMB director, told reporters. Until Monday, the Trump administration and its predecessors had said refunds couldn’t be paid while the IRS was closed because they weren’t necessary to protect life or government property.