Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters President Trump would sign the $1.3 trillion spending package passed by Congress on Friday, but Trump says he is considering a veto over immigration concerns.
President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Friday to threaten to veto a $1.3 trillion federal budget that was approved by Congress just hours earlier.
The House of Representatives passed the legislation, a sweeping omnibus spending package that would boost funding for defense and keep the federal government operational through September, on Thursday by a vote of 256-167, and the Senate approved it early Friday morning by a vote of 65-32. The measure must now be signed by the president by midnight tonight in order to avoid (another) government shutdown.
Also included in the bill is a reported $1.5 billion in funding for the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program, an Obama-era competitive grant program that helps funnel federal dollars to important transportation infrastructure projects. Should the measure pass, this would be a stark turnaround from Trump’s initial budget proposal, which would have slashed funding for the Department of Transportation and completely eliminated the TIGER program.
According to a statement from House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., the budget “includes $21.2 billion in new funding for long-overdue improvements to our nation’s infrastructure—a key priority for the administration—including resources to improve highways, railways, and airports.”
In a speech on the House floor Thursday, Ryan said that although the budget includes many other critical provisions, he supported the bill primarily because of a sizable boost in military spending, the largest such increase in 15 years.
“We have the greatest fighting force in the world, but we have asked them to do so much more with so much less for so long,” he said. “Under the last administration, keeping a modern military force was simply not a priority, and the result has been a staggering readiness crisis that has cost us American lives. Today we begin to reverse that damage.
“Yes, this bill is critical for many, many other reasons,” he added. “This bill starts construction on the wall. It turns the Gateway decision over to the Trump administration. It funds our war on opioids. It invests in infrastructure. It funds school safety and mental health.
“But what this bill is ultimately about—what we fought for for so long—is finally giving our military the tools and the resources it needs to do the job.”
But some lawmakers, like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voted against the legislation simply because Congress did not have enough time to read and fully understand all of the various measures included in the 2,232-page bill.
“You have to know what’s in it,” he told Capitol Hill news outlet McClatchy DC. “Really, should we be looking at 1,000-page bills with 24 hours to decide what’s in them? It’s really not a good way to run your government.”
Paul has also taken his conservative colleagues to task for the sheer size of the budget, which lacks any new offsets for spending.
“That’s why I gave them a piece of my mind the last time around,” he said. “I’m upset that we’re spending like every Democrat that we criticized.
“I ran for office because I thought the Obama spending and trillion dollar annual deficits were a real problem for our country, and now Republicans are doing the same thing,” he added. “So I’m giving them the same grief I gave Obama.”
Trump’s objections, however, are centered not on the size of the bill, but the fact that it does not include a solution for recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program or sufficient funding for his proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“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,” he said in a tweet on Friday.
Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), previously indicated that Trump intends to sign the budget despite its flaws and concessions, leaving analysts to wonder whether his threat of a veto is genuine or mere posturing.
“Let’s cut right to the chase. Is the President going to sign the bill? The answer is yes,” Mulvaney told reporters on Thursday.
“Is it perfect? No,” he added. “Is it exactly what we asked for in the budget? No. Were we ever going to get that? No. That is not how the process works.”
Opponents of the bill were quick to publicly fan the veto flames.
“I agree @realDonaldTrump should veto this sad excuse for legislation because it’s $1.3 trillion in spending that (almost) no one read,” Paul said on Twitter.
“Please do, Mr. President. I am just down the street and will bring you a pen,” added Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. “The spending levels without any offsets are grotesque, throwing all of our children under the bus. Totally irresponsible.”
Trump threatens to veto budget as shutdown deadline looms
