With Deadline Looming, Trump Threatens to Veto Spending Bill

President Donald Trump speaks at The Generation Next event, a White House Forum featuring millennial voters and administration officials on March 22, 2018, in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington on March 22, 2018. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

With the deadline for a government shutdown looming, President Donald Trump said that he is considering a veto of the $1.3 trillion budget bill which was just approved by the House and Senate.

The president explained in a Twitter message that the measure does not fund a wall on the southern border and does nothing for the 800,000 aliens who entered the country illegally as minors.

The president’s budget chief, Mick Mulvaney, had indicated on Thursday that Trump would sign the budget bill, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“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,” the president wrote on Twitter.

With assurances from Mulvaney and Republican leaders that Trump would sign the bill, most lawmakers had already left Washington for a two-week recess. If Trump doesn’t sign the bill by midnight on Friday, the government’s funding will expire.

Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management and Budget at a White House press briefing in Washington on March 22, 2018. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

The bill passed by the House on Thursday and the Senate early on Friday includes only $1.6 billion in funding for a border wall with Mexico, a signature promise that Trump campaigned on. The entire project is estimated to cost $33 billion. The provision also prohibits construction of the kind of structure that Trump demanded.

Trump has long reached out to Democrats to make a deal which would fund the wall in exchange for a concession for the 800,000 participants of the Obama-era DACA program, which granted a temporary legal status to aliens who entered the country illegally as minors. Trump ended the program in September but has offered to revive it if the Democrats agree to fund the wall and other immigration enforcement priorities.

In the most recent negotiation, the White House offered to resume the DACA program in exchange for $25 billion in wall funding, Fox News reported, citing a congressional GOP source. The deal broke down after Democrats demanded a path to citizenship to an expanded pool of 1.8 million illegal aliens.

“DACA was abandoned by the Democrats. Very unfair to them! Would have been tied to desperately needed Wall,” Trump wrote on Twitter on Friday, one hour prior to announcing that he is considering a veto.

If Trump vetoes the bill, Congress could choose to override the veto. The House and Senate would require two-thirds of lawmakers to do so. The bill passed with less than two-thirds in both the House and Senate.

Some conservative lawmakers applauded the president’s intention to veto.

“Please do, Mr. President. I am just down the street and will bring you a pen,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) wrote on Twitter. “The spending levels without any offsets are grotesque, throwing all of our children under the bus. Totally irresponsible.”

From NTD.tv

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