Trump has no comment as Congress passes $1.2 trillion spending package

While House and Senate conservatives railed towards the $1.2 trillion federal funding invoice that handed Friday, as the de facto chief of the Republican Party remained silent.

Former President Donald Trump, the GOP’s presumptive 2024 nominee, made no public feedback, and his marketing campaign didn’t reply to a number of requests for comment on the invoice, which President Biden signed into legislation on Saturday.

“This agreement represents a compromise, which means neither side got everything it wanted,” Biden, a Democrat, stated in a press release. “But it rejects extreme cuts from House Republicans and expands access to child care, invests in cancer research, funds mental health and substance use care, advances American leadership abroad, and provides resources to secure the border that my administration successfully fought to include. That’s good news for the American people.”

Congress averted a prolonged partial authorities shutdown Saturday when the Senate handed the spending package 74-24 within the wee hours of the morning. The invoice handed the House on Friday by a vote of 286-134, with a majority of Republicans, 113, voting towards it. 

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Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media after voting at a polling station setup within the Morton and Barbara Mandel Recreation Center on March 19, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Republican opponents seethed as the package moved by way of Congress, arguing that it did little to deal with the $34 trillion nationwide debt, funded Biden’s insurance policies that they oppose and failed to incorporate border safety enforcement measures that GOP lawmakers had demanded in an effort to fund the Department of Homeland Security. 

The closing vote violated the so-called Hastert Rule, an extended held GOP “rule,” named after former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, that holds Republican management ought to enable votes solely on payments which have a “majority of the majority” in settlement — in different phrases, provided that a majority of Republicans assist them. 

That final result mirrored deep divisions inside the House GOP convention, with many Republicans expressing frustration at management for unveiling the 1,012-page package simply 48 hours earlier than lawmakers had been requested to vote. 

“It’s total lack of backbone, total lack of leadership, and a total failure by Republican leadership. There’s no other way to describe it,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, stated Thursday on former Trump White House adviser Stephen Ok. Bannon’s “War Room.” “This bill is an abomination.”

SENATE PASSES MAMMOTH $1.2T SPENDING PACKAGE AFTER BRIEF PARTIAL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

Senators voted to go a package of funding payments that will full the appropriations course of for 2024 and keep away from a authorities shutdown.  (REUTERS/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades)

Senate Republicans who opposed the package made comparable complaints, with Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah., telling Fox News Digital that it was an “utterly absurd, insulting and lawless suggestion that that is an appropriate legislative process.” 

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., accused the invoice’s supporters of “caving to Biden & Schumer & voting for billions in earmarks and special interest giveaways,” in a put up on X. 

GOP firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., went to date as to introduce a movement to take away House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., from management, accusing him of betrayal. Other Republicans, like Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., stated that eradicating Johnson could be a “mistake,” arguing that the speaker has accomplished “the best he could” with a one-seat majority.

While Washington Republicans struggle one another, Trump has not but supplied a transparent imaginative and prescient for a way he would handle these spending crises, had been he to win again the White House in 2024. 

HOUSE PASSES $1.2 TRILLION GOVERNMENT SPENDING BILL TO AVERT GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, was among the many most vocal House Republicans against the $1.2 trillion spending invoice, calling it an “abomination.” 

On the marketing campaign path, the presumptive GOP nominee has insisted that he’ll repay the nationwide debt if he ousts Biden. But whereas Trump was president from 2017 by way of 2020, the legal guidelines and govt orders he signed added an estimated $8.4 trillion to the nationwide debt, with curiosity, in response to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).

Indeed, Trump was liable for signing a number of trillion-dollar omnibus spending payments into legislation, even earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic. Excluding COVID aid, Trump added $4.8 trillion to the debt over his 4 years in workplace, CRFB estimates. 

In his first two years in workplace, when the House and Senate had been in Republican fingers, the Trump White House unsuccessfully sought to chop about $15 billion in federal spending with a recissions request. That effort narrowly handed the House and died within the Senate, the place Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Richard Burr, R-N.C. sided with Democrats on a procedural vote to kill it. 

In 2018, confronted with a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending invoice, Trump backed down from a veto menace and reluctantly signed the invoice, reasoning that it offered wanted funds for the army. 

BIDEN SAYS $1.2T SPENDING PACKAGE IS ‘GOOD NEWS FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE,’ BUT CONGRESS’ WORK ISN’T OVER

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is underneath fireplace from GOP hardliners for a way he negotiated the $1.2 trillion “minibus” invoice, unveiling the textual content simply 48 hours earlier than lawmakers had been requested to vote.  (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

“I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again,” Trump stated in remarks after he signed the invoice. 

The very subsequent yr, Trump signed a $1.4 trillion spending package to avert a partial authorities shutdown. He did so once more as considered one of his final acts as president in December 2020, placing his signature on one other large $1.4 trillion omnibus that included $900 billion in COVID-19 support.

But whereas Trump didn’t maintain his promise to get federal spending underneath management in his first time period, Biden is on monitor to exceed Trump’s debt accumulation by the tip of this yr. In his first three years as president, Biden has added $6.75 trillion to the nationwide debt, in response to Treasury Department knowledge. In his closing yr, the Congressional Budget Office initiatives a deficit of $1.58 trillion — which might whole $8.3 trillion by the tip of Biden’s first time period. 

Those estimates had been made earlier than Biden signed the brand new $1.2 trillion appropriations package on Saturday.

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Biden’s fiscal yr 2025 finances requires $3.3 trillion in web deficit discount, though the income that’s wanted to realize that objective would largely come from tax will increase. Biden has promised to not enhance taxes on these making lower than $400,000, however he in any other case has known as for a repeal of Trump’s tax cuts and extra taxes on companies and the rich.

Trump has campaigned on new rounds of tax cuts, arguing that financial development stimulated by decrease taxes will make up for any loss in authorities income. But he has but to inform voters how he plans to chop spending, or how he’ll work with Congress to interrupt the cycle of last-minute omnibus spending payments that had been attribute of his first time period.