No Democrat senators voted against the omnibus spending bill President Trump signed Friday.
The $1.1 trillion measure will keep the government funded through September and has been panned by many conservatives. When it was voted on by the House of Representatives, 103 Republicans voted against the bill supported by both Speaker Ryan and the Trump administration. The American Conservative Union opposed the legislation, and radio commentator Rush Limbaugh asked Vice President Mike Pence, “What is the point of voting Republican if the Democrats are gonna continue to win practically 95 percent of their objectives?”
Conservative critics of the believe it does not represent the agenda that President Trump campaigned on, despite Republican control of Congress and the White House.
The spending measure does not include funding for the construction of a southern border wall, only funding the repair of existing fencing. It also does not include funding for thousands of new immigration officers and instead will pay for the hiring of 100 new ones. The omnibus spending measure also doesn’t defund Planned Parenthood and gives more money to programs derided by conservatives such as the National Endowment of the Arts and Amtrak.
Democrats have publicly been describing the spending bill as a win. “I think we had a strategy and it worked,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told The Washington Post. “Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate were closer to one another than Republicans were to Donald Trump.”
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told fellow House Democrats in a letter that the bill is a “defeat” for President Trump because it “does not fund the immoral and unwise border wall or create a cruel new deportation force.”
One prominent D.C. Republican asked The Daily Caller, “Did John Boehner actually manage to negotiate better deals than Trump/Ryan? This spending deal is horrible.”
Congressional Republicans who were opposed to the bill said they were helpless as Senate rules would have forced them to gain Democrat votes to pass a measure. “I think the leadership of the House, the Senate, and the administration got the best deal they could possibly get,” Texas Rep. Brian Babin told The Daily Caller. “If we didn’t have to get 60 votes in the Senate, I think we could get 100 percent of the president’s agenda through.”
The White House has not been using this argument and instead has described the spending bill as a win for the president. “I think it’s great that the Democrats like the bill. That’s fantastic,” Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters. “We thought this was a really good deal for this administration as well. Everything that we got in this deal — last night — lines up perfectly with the President’s priorities.”
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