Trump signs $1.3tr budget after drama
Is ‘very disappointed’ with the package, in part because it does not fully pay for his planned
President Donald Trump grudgingly signed a $1.3 trillion (Dh4.77 trillion) federal spending measure on Friday and averted a midnight government shutdown — but only after undercutting his own negotiators and setting off a mini-panic with a last-minute veto threat. The episode further eroded the already damaged credibility of both the president and a White House staff that had assured the nation he was on-board.
Trump said he was “very disappointed” in the package, in part because it did not fully pay for his planned border wall with Mexico and did not extend protection from deportation to some 700,000 “Dreamer” immigrants due to lose coverage under a programme the president himself has moved to eliminate.
But Trump praised the bill’s provisions to increase military spending and said he had “no choice but to fund our military.” “My highest duty is to keep America safe,” he said.
The bill signing came a few hours after Trump created his latest round of last-minute drama by tweeting that he was “considering” a veto.
With Congress already on recess, and a government shutdown looming, he said that young immigrants now protected in the US under Barack Obama’s Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals programme “have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defence, is not fully funded.”
Trump’s veto threat put him at odds with top members of his administration and Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had said publicly that Trump supported the bill. Advisers inside and outside the White House said they never expected Trump to go through with his threat and believed he was likely just blowing off steam.
Finally, in made-for-TV scheduling, Trump took to Twitter again to announce he’d be holding a news conference to talk about the bill. The drama was short-lived: An aide told reporters the signing was on. And it was a monologue by Trump, not a news conference. He answered two questions called out to him as he left the room.
Asked why he’d made the threat, Trump said he’d “looked very seriously at the veto,” but “because of the incredible gains that we’ve been able to make for the military that overrode any of our thinking.”
He warned Congress: “I will never sign another bill like this again.”
The giant spending bill, though, expires on September 30, and another funding measure will be needed. To boost the party-in-power’s ability to muscle its agenda through Congress, he called for an overhaul of Senate rules to allow for simple-majority votes on all bills and appealed to Congress for line-item veto power to kill specific spending items he disagrees with. The Supreme Court ruled in 1998 that a congressionally passed line-item veto was unconstitutional.