Trump signs funding bill to avoid shutdown

President Trump signed the Republican-crafted spending bill to avert a government shutdown, the White House said on Saturday.

The Republican-crafted bill will fund the government through Sept. 30 and caps off the first funding fight of Trump’s second term. The saga has also led to an internal war among Democrats on Capitol Hill.

The legislation, that Trump had previously endorsed, boosts defense funding by $6 billion and imposes $13 billion in cuts to nondefense funding.

The deadline to avert a government shutdown was 11:59 p.m. Friday and the White House didn’t announce that Trump’s signature was on it until midday on Saturday. Trump is spending the weekend in Palm Beach and went out to golf at Mar-a-Lago around 8:30 a.m.

The final vote to pass the bill in the Senate was 54-46, with two Democrats joining 52 Republicans to pass the bill. But the key vote came earlier, when the Senate voted 62-38 to advance the legislation.

A 60-vote majority was needed to clear that hurdle, and 10 Democrats joined all but one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), to get over that threshold.

The bill was able to advance after Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) announced on Thursday that he would vote for it, infuriating House Democrats who had urged their counterparts in the upper chamber to block it.

Trump multiple times on Friday praised Schumer for supporting the bill, congratulating him for doing the “right thing” and later telling reporters, “I appreciate Sen. Schumer and I think he did the right thing. Really, I’m very impressed by that.”

The Democratic divisions caused by the vote have shattered the message of unity they were hoping to convey coming out of the House's annual strategy retreat this week, eroding confidence within the party that Schumer will hold the line to block the GOP agenda in the legislative fights to come.

Schumer’s move was seen as providing crucial political cover for Democratic Senate centrists, after they were in a tense internal debate over whether to vote for the bill and keep the government open. Meanwhile, a dozen House Democrats in tough districts voted against the measure Tuesday.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D), who voted against the bill, declined to say he has confidence in Schumer’s ability to lead the party heading into the coming fights against Trump's ambitious agenda.

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