Donald Trump Says He Might Veto Spending Bill

Wall Street Journal

By Kristina Peterson

March 23, 2018

Donald Trump Says He Might Veto Spending Bill

President Donald Trump threatened Friday morning to veto a sweeping spending bill just hours after it passed both chambers of Congress, despite assurances from White House officials and GOP leaders that he supported it.

Just a day earlier, Mick Mulvaney, the president’s budget chief, said that Mr. Trump would sign the bill. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), who had met with Mr. Trump to discuss the legislation Wednesday, told reporters that the president supported the bill “no two ways about it.”

But in a tweet Friday, Mr. Trump cited his unhappiness with the amount of funding for his proposed wall on the border with Mexico, and he faulted Democrats for the fact that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which former President Barack Obama established and which the president ended last year, wasn’t addressed.

“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,” Mr. Trump tweeted.

The $1.3 trillion spending bill, passed by the House on Thursday and the Senate early Friday morning, didn’t include an extension of DACA, which has been a priority for Democrats this year. The Obama-era program shielded from deportation undocumented immigrants brought to the country at a young age, often called Dreamers, and allows them temporarily to work legally in the U.S.

When Mr. Trump ended the program in September, he gave Congress until March 5 to pass a replacement. But lawmakers and Mr. Trump repeatedly tangled over what should be paired with an extension of the program. A federal court has ordered that the administration continue the program for now, and the Supreme Court has declined to expedite its hearing of the government’s appeal, lessening the urgency for lawmakers to agree on a fix.

The spending bill includes $1.57 billion for construction of physical barriers on the border with Mexico and other security measures. Mr. Trump won funding for 33 miles of new fencing on the Texas border—about half of what he requested. He also got funding for 60 miles of replacement or secondary fencing. That was more than Mr. Trump asked for but is also far less controversial.

“It does a lot of what we wanted,” Mr. Mulvaney said Thursday.

Democrats won a number of concessions in the spending bill, particularly regarding immigration enforcement inside the U.S. The bill also specified that the new border construction must use designs now in use, which rules out a solid concrete wall.

Some conservatives, upset that the bill didn’t include more funding for the wall, had urged Mr. Trump earlier in the week to veto the bill. Mr. Ryan on Thursday defended the bill’s border-security funding, saying it gave Mr. Trump a “down payment” on building the wall.

“This actually has more wall funding and more wall allotment than the administration’s request had,” Mr. Ryan said. “We’re going to be getting a down payment and starting on the border security.”

A senior Democratic aide said Mr. Trump’s remarks in his Friday tweet about the Democrats’ position was false and that it would be up to Republicans to ensure the president didn’t trigger a government shutdown at midnight.

In January, Democrats tried to use their leverage on spending bills to force negotiations over a permanent resolution to the DACA issue. But the ensuing three-day government shutdown produced only a series of votes in the Senate on a handful of immigration measures, none of which got the 60 votes needed to advance.

Mr. Trump opposed a bipartisan Senate proposal that administration officials said didn’t meet all of his requirements. He has also rejected offers from Democrats to pair a $25 billion increase for wall funding with a path to citizenship for those in the DACA program or eligible for it. The president has said legal protections for the Dreamers must be paired with tighter border security, including funding for a wall, as well as curbs to the family-based migration system and an end to the diversity visa lottery, which makes eligible for entry 50,000 people from countries that are underrepresented.

Many House lawmakers were expected to be out of town Friday, attending the funeral for Rep. Louise Slaughter (D., N.Y.), who died last week.

For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com