President Trump said he signed a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill into law on Friday, despite threatening hours earlier to veto the legislation due to frustrations with its paltry border security funding and failure to codify protections for undocumented youth.
“My highest duty is to keep America safe,” Trump said. “Therefore, as a matter of national security, I’ve signed this omnibus bill.”
“There are a lot of things I’m not happy about in this bill. There are a lot of things we should not have had in this bill,” he said.
But Trump also warned that this would be the last omnibus bill he signs into law, and said the process for getting the bill to his desk this week was “ridiculous.” Many Republicans and Democrats complained that they had just hours to absorb the bill before leaders asked them to pass it.
“You tell me who can read that quickly,” Trump said of the 2,232-page bill. “I’m not going to do it again.”
Trump also recommended that the Senate eliminate the filibuster rule that requires a supermajority to pass legislation like the spending bill.
“We have to get rid of the filibuster rule … and go to 51 votes in the Senate,” Trump said.
The president signed the bill a day after several dozen conservative House Republicans voted against the legislation, citing concerns about the national debt and unmet funding requests for the construction of a southwest border wall. The bill extends government funding through September and was pushed through Congress at the last minute, hours before a partial shutdown would take effect on Saturday.
But Trump shocked bipartisan congressional leaders early Friday morning after he announced on Twitter that he was considering sending the legislation back to Capitol Hill with a presidential veto. The president’s opposition to the bill appeared to stem from its funding levels for immigration enforcement and lack of a fix for beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
“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 the bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defense, is not fully funded,” Trump had tweeted.
