By Kristina Peterson and Laura Meckler
WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump's public complaints about
the sweeping spending bill he threatened to veto before signing it
into law Friday highlighted his discomfort with the classic
Washington compromise: nobody wins everything, but both sides get
some of what they want.
The bill that will fund the government until October gave
neither party what they wanted on immigration policy. But by
boosting spending by more than $140 billion above limits set in
2011, lawmakers from both parties got enough policy wins to live
with the $1.3 trillion result. With just hours left before a
government shutdown, Mr. Trump decided to live with it too, but not
happily.
"As a matter of national security, I've signed this omnibus
budget bill, " Mr. Trump said Friday at a press conference, but
added, "There are a lot of things that I'm unhappy about in this
bill."
Most prominently, Mr. Trump was unsatisfied with the bill's
down-the-middle approach on immigration, which left out the most
contentious proposals on both sides. The spending bill passed by
Congress this week didn't supply Democrats with what they most
wanted: protections for undocumented immigrants in an Obama-era
program shielding them for deportation. Nor did it give Mr. Trump
and conservative Republicans what they sought: billions more to
construct a physical wall along the border with Mexico, and new
limits on legal immigration.
Mr. Trump also blamed Democrats for forcing Republicans to agree
to a $63 billion increase in domestic spending in return for an $80
billion increase in military spending, all of which sent the price
tag of the bill climbing. The compromise pleased defense hawks, and
those who wanted more domestic funding, but frustrated those most
concerned about the impact of the increased spending on the federal
debt.
"We're very disappointed that in order to fund the military, we
had to give up things where we consider, in many cases, them to be
bad or them to be a waste of money," Mr. Trump said Friday. "But
that's the way, unfortunately, right now the system works."
Democrats generally don't object to lifting defense spending,
but have used their leverage on spending bills to get similar
increases for domestic programs. The spending bill includes higher
funding for the National Institutes of Health, Head Start and
child-care programs, opioid research and treatment, veterans'
health care and infrastructure.
"It certainly doesn't have everything Democrats want, and it
does contain several things Democrats are not thrilled about,"
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said on the Senate
floor Thursday. "The same is true for our Republican friends. That
is true of all good compromises."
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) expressed similar sentiments
this week. "No bill of this size is perfect," he said when it was
released. "But this legislation addresses important priorities and
makes us stronger at home and abroad."
The president trained most of his fire on the lack of an
immigration deal in the budget package. He said Democrats had
blocked the inclusion of the Deferred Action for Childhood
Arrivals, or DACA, program, even though they strongly support such
protections and had offered Mr. Trump billions in border security
spending in hopes of reaching a deal.
"We wanted to include DACA in this bill," Mr. Trump told
reporters. "The Democrats would not do it."
Mr. Trump ended the program in September, but gave Congress
until earlier this month to pass a replacement. Meanwhile, a
federal court has ordered the administration to continue the
program for now, easing some of the urgency for lawmakers to agree
to a fix.
Instead, the spending bill, negotiated over weeks by
congressional leaders, funded far less-controversial components. It
will provide $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, more than Mr. Trump had asked
for.
"It does a lot of what we wanted," White House budget director
Mick Mulvaney saidThursday.
Democrats won a number of concessions, 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.
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,
and turned down a deal that would have paired $25 billion in border
wall spending with a path to citizenship for people eligible for
DACA. 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.
Some GOP lawmakers criticized the expensive compromise their
leaders, including Mr. Trump, had agreed to.
"National security" and "military funding" are the excuses
Republican elected officials have used for decades to support
massive spending bills and bigger government," said Rep. Justin
Amash (R., Mich.) on Twitter.
Write to Kristina Peterson at kristina.peterson@wsj.com and
Laura Meckler at laura.meckler@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 23, 2018 18:07 ET (22:07 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.