Summary: On Friday, Trump threatened to veto a government spending bill that would’ve stopped Saturday’s potential shutdown.
Congress worked until the wee hours to pass legislation to stop a government shutdown, but on Friday, President Donald Trump expressed his disagreement with the bill and threatened to veto it.
If Trump does not sign the bill by Friday, the government will shut down on 12:01 am Saturday.
Trump said he considered vetoing Congress’ $1.3 trillion spending bill because he did not like the immigration proposals in it, amongst other grievances.
“I am considering a VETO of the Omnibus Spending Bill based on the fact that the 800,000 plus DACA recipients have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded,” Trump stated on Twitter.
According to NBC News, Trump’s tweet is an “about face” to his previous stance that he would sign the bill despite his misgivings, and NBC News said, “The president’s tweet throws more chaos into the process to keep the government running, even after it looked like Trump’s signature would only be a formality.”
Vice President Mike Pence and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney stated on Thursday that they supported the bipartisan bill. It would fund the government until the end of September, and the bill had plans to increase border security and military spending as well as efforts to fight the opiod epidemic, all causes that Trump stated were important to him.
However, Trump did not like that there was not enough money to fund his wall or to address the recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program, known as Dreamers. A source to NBC News that Trump was frustrated that Democrats were not fighting harder to help the Dreamers.
An administrator said that if Trump did not sign the bill that he believes lawmakers would be willing to draft a better deal.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, said that he hoped Trump would support this bill because it significantly boosts defense spending.
“This funds the wall, fixes the military, fights opioids and does the things that we said,” Ryan said Thursday on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
On Thursday, Pence told an audience in New Hampsire that he was confident Trump would sign this bill, according to NPR.
“And with $1.6 billion included in the spending bill that arrives on President Trump’s desk tomorrow, we’re going to start to build that wall,” Pence said. “We’re doing it.”
But not everyone in Washington was against Trump’s veto. For instance, Senator Bob Corker was amongst fiscal conservatives who felt the bill was too spendy and would add to the nation’s debt.
“Please [veto], Mr. President. I am just down the street and will bring you a pen. The spending levels without any offsets are grotesque, throwing all of our children under the bus. Totally irresponsible,” Corker tweeted on Friday.