Lawmakers have eight legislative days to either a pass a budget or a sixth continuing resolution for fiscal 2018 before the March 23 deadline.

The deadline to avoid a third government shutdown this year is fast approaching. But unlike previous months, there’s more optimism in the air.

Congress already completed much of the more complicated work last month, when members passed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018. The budget act set spending caps for the next two years — at $300 billion higher than current levels — and extended current appropriations through March 23.

Lawmakers have spent the last four weeks finalizing appropriations for fiscal 2018, with the intent of packaging all 12 spending bills into one omnibus.

As long as that omnibus steers clear of any potential politically-divisive issues, Roll Call Senior Editor David Hawkings expects a relatively tame few weeks leading up to the March 23 deadline.

“The appropriators are talking about actually getting it done a few days ahead of schedule,” Hawkings told the Federal Drive with Tom Temin. “They are down to a very few issues. Negotiating these omnibuses is a little bit like a pyramid, where a vast majority of the decisions at the bottom are handled by… staffers on these various appropriations subcommittees. The ones they can’t agree on go to the members and then to the chairman and then to the leadership. Finally, the very, very pinnacle of the issues are really settled by the leadership and the White House. At this point, they’re down to just a couple of those.”

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Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) is also optimistic for the long term, if not slightly more cautious about a short term prediction.

After all, congressional leaders were confident in the days leading up to the passage of the latest CR they could avoid a second government shutdown. But last minute drama on the Senate floor forced another lapse in appropriations.

This time, the spending caps set in the Bipartisan Budget Act should bring more certainty, Connolly said.

“Having that number, and it’s at a higher level for both defense and domestic spending, gives us some breathing room and a little sense of predictability over the next year and a half,” he said Monday morning at the Federal Managers Association’s national convention in Alexandria, Virginia. “Bumping up against March 23, we may yet again not have everything worked out. … There could be a very small CR while we put the finishing touches on the omnibus, but I would expect an omnibus for the balance of the fiscal year.”

Connolly, meanwhile, is turning his attention to the familiar platter of challenges facing the federal workforce.

For the fourth consecutive year, Connolly offered an alternative pay raise for federal employees in the form of the Federal Adjustment of Incomes Rates (FAIR) Act. This time, the legislation calls for a 3 percent pay raise for 2019.

“Sometimes the press gets a little cynical, like, ‘You know that bill’s not going to pass.’ If we did nothing, then there’s no resistance at all,” Connolly said. “There’s no pressure to raise federal pay at all. By having that as a marker, we think we’ve actually been able to influence both the Obama and Trump White Houses on the subject of federal pay. We’re going to continue to do that on your behalf.”

The president’s 2019 budget proposal includes a pay freeze for civilian employees.

Connolly said he’s working with members of Congress to better educate them about their constituencies of federal employees, and he’s reminding them that the federal workforce has already had three years of frozen pay in recent years.

“When we have the opportunity to engage with my colleagues, most would ascent to the proposition that federal employees deserve a pay raise,” Connolly told reporters Monday morning. “Ideologues don’t care. Ideologues feel, ‘good enough for them to freeze their salaries.’ For other members it’s just not an issue, because it’s just not something that’s talked about in their districts. That’s why it’s so important we raise that level of dialogue back home.”

The president’s proposed cuts to the federal retirement system also has Connolly’s attention. The recommendations to increase employee pension contributions by 1 percent a year, eliminate the cost-of-living adjustment for participants in the Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS), base future retirement benefits on the highest five years of a worker’s salary and eliminate the special retirement supplement for employees over age 62 represent a “breach in contract,” Connolly said.

They’re also an attempt to make agencies more dysfunctional and less desirable places to work, he added. But Connolly believes he can help change the dialogue.

“If informed, if educated about who… federal employee[s are] and what do they do… I think that educational process would go a long way toward maybe softening some of the rhetoric and some of the actions my colleagues have taken,” he said.

The education process is a long one, but Connolly said he’s seen his colleagues change their votes in the past.

“We have a fight on our hands,” he said. “We’re up to it. We’ve been able to roll back or beat back a lot of this, but it’s a never ending process.”

Copyright © 2019 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.</s>By Jill Colvin, Catherine Lucey, Lisa Mascaro And Alan Fram, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump signed a US$1.3-trillion spending measure Friday, averting a midnight government shutdown just hours after declaring he was considering a veto.

Trump said he was “very disappointed” in the package, in part because it did not fully fund his plans for a border wall with Mexico and did not address some 700,000 “Dreamer” immigrants who are now protected from deportation under a program that he has moved to eliminate.

But Trump praised the increases the bill provides for military spending and said he had “no choice but to fund our military.”

“My highest duty is to keep America safe,” he said.

The bill signing came a few hours after Trump created last-minute drama by saying in a tweet that he was “considering” a veto.

With Congress already on recess, and a government shutdown looming, he said that young immigrants now protected in the U.S. under Barack Obama’s Delayed Action for Childhood Arrivals “have been totally abandoned by the Democrats (not even mentioned in Bill) and the BORDER WALL, which is desperately needed for our National Defence, is not fully funded.”

Trump’s veto threat was at odds with top members of his administration and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had said Thursday that he was supportive of the measure. The White House also issued a formal statement of administration policy indicating Trump would sign the bill. Several advisers inside and outside the White House said earlier Friday that they suspected the tweet was just Trump blowing off steam.

Finally, in made-for-TV scheduling, Trump took to twitter again to announce he’d be holding a news conference to talk about the bill. The drama was short-lived: An aide told reporters the signing was on. And telegraphing the outcome, an internal television feed advertised its next program: “President Trump Participates in a Bill Signing.”

Asked why he’d made the threat, Trump said he’d “looked very seriously at the veto,” but “because of the incredible gains that we’ve been able to make for the military that overrode any of our thinking.”

Trump also warned Congress: “I will never sign another bill like this again.”

The will-he, won’t he episode came hours after the Senate early Friday morning passed the $1.3 trillion spending package aimed at keeping the government open past midnight.

Trump has been increasingly frustrated with media coverage of the bill, spurred on by conservative Republican lawmakers and other critics who had spent recent days calling the president, inciting him, and making their cases loudly on cable news shows Trump is known to watch.

Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the House Freedom Caucus and a friend of the president, said in a tweet that the group would “fully support” a veto, adding that Congress should pass a short-term budget resolution while Trump and congressional leaders “negotiate a better deal for the forgotten men and women of America.”

Sen. Senator Bob Corker, R-Tenn., also egged Trump on. “Please do, Mr. President,” he tweeted. “I am just down the street and will bring you a pen. The spending levels without any offsets are grotesque, throwing all of our children under the bus. Totally irresponsible.”

Senate passage of the bill averted a third federal shutdown this year, an outcome both parties wanted to avoid.

While Trump has repeatedly criticized Democrats over DACA, he cancelled the program last fall, ending the issuance of new DACA permits. A judge has forced the administration to continue issuing renewals.

The spending package includes $1.6 billion for Trump’s long-promised border wall with Mexico. But less than half of the nearly 95 miles (153 kilometres) of border construction that have been approved can be spent on new barriers. The rest can only be used to repair existing segments.

The money was far less than the $25 billion over 10 years Trump had asked for as part of a last-ditch deal that would have included providing a temporary extension of the DACA program. White House budget officials have nonetheless tried to spin the funding as a win.

“We ended up asking for 74 miles worth of wall, we get 110. Not exactly what we wanted where we wanted,” budget director Mick Mulvaney said Thursday. “But generally speaking, we think this is a really, really good immigration package.”

The House easily approved the spending package Thursday, 256-167, a bipartisan tally that underscored the popularity of the compromise, which funds the government through September. It beefs up military and domestic programs, delivering federal funds to every corner of the country.

But action stalled in the Senate, as conservatives ran the clock in protest. Once the opponents relented, the Senate began voting, clearing the package by a 65-32 vote.

“Shame, shame. A pox on both Houses – and parties,” tweeted Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who spent the afternoon tweeting details found in the 2,200-page bill that was released the night before. “No one has read it. Congress is broken.”

The omnibus spending bill was supposed to be an antidote to the stopgap measures Congress has been forced to pass — five in this fiscal year alone — to keep government temporarily running amid partisan fiscal disputes.

But the overall result was unimaginable to many Republicans after campaigning on spending restraints and balanced budgets. Along with the recent GOP tax cuts law, the bill that stood a foot tall at some lawmakers’ desks ushers in the return of $1 trillion deficits.

Trying to smooth over differences, Republican leaders focused on military increases that were once core to the party’s brand as guardians of national security.

But even that remained a hard sell — a sign of the entrenched GOP divisions that have made the leadership’s job controlling the majority difficult. They will likely repeat in the next budget battle in the fall.

Associated Press writers Matthew Daly, Zeke Miller and Jonathan Lemire contributed to this report.</s>But speaking to reporters at the White House about four hours later, Trump said he had decided to sign the bill despite his reservations, arguing that it provides much-needed funding for the military, including a pay increase for troops and new equipment.

“My highest duty is to keep America safe,” Trump said. “We need to take care of our military.”

Still, he voiced disdain for the hasty way the bill was passed.

“I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again,” Trump said, also calling on Congress to give him a line-item veto, a tool that the Supreme Court has said is unconstitutional for a president.

“There are a lot of things that I’m unhappy about in this bill,” he said later in his 20-minute remarks, telling reporters that he had “very seriously” considered a veto.

Why did Trump threaten to veto a spending bill hours before he signed it?

The announcement, which Trump teased in a separate tweet an hour before, capped off a wild morning in the White House and on Capitol Hill. Several aides scrambled to persuade the president not to follow through with his veto threat.

In his tweet Friday morning, Trump said that those protected from deportation by the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program have been “totally abandoned” by Congress, and he blamed the Democrats.

Trump, who decided last fall to end the DACA program, was seeking a deal that would give Democrats protections they sought for the program's recipients in exchange for additional funding of $25 billion for his long-promised U.S.-Mexico border wall. The bill includes $1.6 billion for fencing and other border security measures.

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. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 23, 2018

“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,” Trump said in his tweet.

In his remarks at the White House, Trump said he was disappointed in the level of border-security funding but pledged to do as much as possible with it and to seek more money from Congress.

Saying he was addressing Hispanics, Trump argued that his party is more interested in the fate of dreamers than Democrats are.

“Republicans are much more on your side than the Democrats, who are using you for their own purposes,” the president said. His aides have argued Democrats are trying to use DACA as an election issue.

People familiar with Trump’s thinking said the president was frustrated with the bill and the coverage it was receiving, particularly on Fox News, where critics took aim at the level of spending in the bill.

“He doesn’t care as much about the spending levels, but he knows all of his conservative friends do,” said a senior White House official who requested anonymity to speak more candidly.

Lawmakers have left town on a two-week recess, some of them on overseas trips and with no plans to return to Washington. The House passed the bill midday Thursday, and the Senate cleared the measure early Friday, shortly after midnight.

In late-night drama, Senate passes $1.3 trillion spending bill, averting government shutdown

Trump had until midnight Friday to sign a bill, or a government shutdown would have ensued.

The legislation funds the federal government for the remainder of the 2018 budget year, through Sept. 30, directing $700 billion toward the military and $591 billion to domestic agencies. The military spending is a $66 billion increase over the 2017 level, and the nondefense spending is $52 billion more than last year.

The spending bill is widely expected to be the last major legislation that Congress will pass before the November midterm elections, increasing pressure to jam the bill full of odds and ends, with provisions addressing areas as varied as guns and invasive carp.

The lack of an immigration deal in the spending bill had set already set off a round of recriminations, with the White House aggressively trying to deflect responsibility.

Trump’s veto threat only intensified the blame game Friday morning.

“Let's not forget that you ended DACA and torpedoed every possible bipartisan fix. This is on you,” Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) said on Twitter.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) accused Trump of making a “loser’s bluff.”

“Go ahead and veto the omnibus over DACA. We dare you,” Pocan said on Twitter. “Everyone knows you’re the reason DACA recipients are abandoned.”

Meanwhile, lawmakers who opposed the spending bill on other grounds used the occasion to urge Trump to follow through with his threat.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), head of the hard-right Freedom Caucus, urged Trump to veto the bill: “The@freedomcaucus would fully support you in this move, Mr. President. Let's pass a short term [continuing resolution] while you negotiate a better deal for the forgotten men and women of America.”

Also urging Trump to veto the bill was Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who in a tweet Friday morning said: “Please do, Mr. President. I am just down the street and will bring you a pen. The spending levels without any offsets are grotesque, throwing all of our children under the bus. Totally irresponsible.”

Before the Senate’s early-morning vote Friday, Corker had complained about the process of rushing the bill through Congress.

Several other conservative lawmakers egged Trump on Friday morning, complaining about the amount of spending and the rushed process. But there was no indication that Trump shared those concerns.

Instead, in his veto threat Friday, Trump proposed something that conservative hard-liners have largely rejected in recent months — trading dreamer protections for border-wall money. Conservatives, emboldened by a White House proposal released in January, have insisted that any immigration deal go further, cutting several programs that allow foreign nationals to live in the United States legally.

Other senior Republicans made Twitter pleas urging Trump to sign the bill. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.) rattled off several policy wins in a Friday tweet directed at the president, including a gun-related measure long championed by the Texas Republican that was included in the 2,232-page spending measure.

“While Ds obstructed normal appropriations process, forcing an Omnibus, the benefits of Omnibus to national security, border security, opioid crisis, infrastructure, school safety and fixing gun background check system are important and will save lives. @realDonaldTrump,” Cornyn tweeted Friday.

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said of Trump’s threat: “I hope he doesn’t do it. That’s my reaction.”

“I don’t think what we did was the best thing we could have done,” Isakson added. “But it was the only thing we could have done, so to veto it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) sized up the president’s veto threat Friday morning this way: “Art of the Deal-Wrecker!” He urged the president to sign the bill.

“One day after his own [Office of Management and Budget] director said he would sign it … he’s now saying he’s thinking about vetoing it,” Kaine told reporters. “What, does he just want to create more confusion and chaos? I don’t get it.”

Kaine said Trump’s professed concern about DACA recipients is not sincere, saying he walked away from an offer from Democrats weeks ago to protect them in exchange for more border-security funding.

“He was the one who poured cold water on it and killed it among the Republicans just a month ago,” Kaine said.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said: “This is classic Trump. He says one thing and then he does something completely different.”

Van Hollen added, “He’s actually one of the worst negotiators I’ve ever seen.”

Although Trump aides declared Thursday that Trump intended to sign the bill, there were signs of his displeasure with various aspects of it.

On Wednesday, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) rushed to the White House to reassure Trump.

The president was upset with the lack of money for his border wall, and he griped about a proposed tunnel between New York and New Jersey — a project beloved by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) — that Trump tried to block as part of the negotiations.

Veto threats were made then, too, but after conversations with Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the White House issued a statement saying Trump supported the bill.

“Is the president going to sign the bill? The answer is yes,” Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters at the White House on Thursday afternoon.

On Thursday, the White House also issued a lengthy release titled “The American People Win as President Donald J. Trump’s Priorities are Funded,” with a long list of specific items in the massive legislation.

Asked about the president’s tweet Friday, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said in a statement, “The tweet stands for itself.”

Josh Dawsey, Erica Werner, Sean Sullivan and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.</s>US President Donald Trump delivering remarks before signing a memorandum on intellectual property tariffs on high-tech goods from China, at the White House in Washington, March 22, 2018. — Reuters picWASHINGTON, March 23 — US President Donald Trump threatened today to veto Congress’ newly passed US$1.3 trillion spending bill over immigration issues, a surprise move that could force the federal government to shutdown when funding expires later in the day.

Yesterday, the White House said Trump was expected to sign the bill into law.

The US House of Representatives and the Senate, both led by Trump’s fellow Republicans, have passed the legislation but in a post on Twitter the president criticized it for not fully funding for his proposed wall on the Mexican border or addressing Dreamer immigrants — those brought to the United States illegally when they were children.

“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,” Trump wrote.

The US Senate voted early today to approve a US$1.3 trillion government funding bill with large increases in military and non-defence spending, following the House’s passage yesterday and sending it Trump. — Reuters</s>
• In a tweet Friday, President Donald Trump threatened to veto the omnibus spending bill.
• The bill passed the House and the Senate on Thursday, a day before the deadline for a government shutdown.
• If Trump does veto the bill, it almost certainly leaves no time for Congress to rework the bill before a shutdown.

President Donald Trump has threatened to veto the $1.3 trillion omnibus funding bill, which would effectively push the federal government into its third shutdown this year.

"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," Trump tweeted on Friday.

The House and the Senate passed the bill Thursday, just a day before funding for the federal government was set to expire.

If Trump vetoes the bill, Congress is unlikely to have enough time to rework the bill and pass it before the shutdown takes effect. House and Senate leaders, along with most lawmakers, have left Washington.

The tweet represented a reversal from Thursday, when top White House advisers — including Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Budget and Management — said Trump would sign the bill. Mulvaney said Trump would sign the bill because it funded his priorities, including "a lot of what we wanted on immigration."

"The president's comment is the comment — there is nothing to add to it," the White House deputy press secretary, Raj Shah, said Friday in response to Trump's tweet.

Trump had also effectively endorsed the bill Thursday, though he complained Republicans "had to waste money on Dem giveaways."

In response to the tweet, one senior Democratic aide told Business Insider that the onus was on Republican leaders to try to avoid the shutdown.

"Ask Republicans. Their problem," the aide said. "He's just trying to get a reaction from Democrats over something that's demonstrably false."

Trump appeared to take issue with the fact that the spending bill does not include any funds for his promised wall along the US-Mexico border. The bill allocates funds only to construct new fencing similar to what already exists along the border and to replace some existing fencing.

According to multiple reports, congressional leaders and the White House were trying to reach a deal that would have traded border-wall funding for a codification of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program.

The DACA program protects from deportation nearly 700,000 unauthorized immigrants who arrived in the US as minors. Trump ended the program in September but gave Congress until March to pass a law codifying protections for DACA recipients. A federal judge recently blocked the Trump administration from ending the program, however, so the program has continued.

Talks over a deal fell apart Tuesday after the Trump administration refused to include a path to citizenship for DACA recipients, instead offering to extend the existing protections for three years. In exchange, Democrats were reportedly set to give Trump the full $25 billion that the administration requested for the wall.

Some Republicans who were dissatisfied with the level of spending in the omnibus bill encouraged the president to go through with the veto.

"Please do, Mr. President. I am just down the street and will bring you a pen," Sen. Bob Corker tweeted. "The spending levels without any offsets are grotesque, throwing all of our children under the bus. Totally irresponsible."

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.</s>A combative Donald Trump threatened Friday to veto a spending deal clinched in a dead-of-night compromise in Congress, in a dramatic U-turn by the president that raises the fresh specter of a government shutdown.

The president brandished the threat in a tweet after the Senate passed the $1.3 trillion spending bill, 65-32, under the pressure of a midnight Friday deadline to fund the government, or shut it down.

It caps yet another week of high drama at the White House where the mercurial former reality TV star replaced his national security advisor, launched a new trade fight with China, and needled investigators probing Russia election meddling.

Trump's White House had given its blessing to the compromise spending deal with Democrats, but by Friday morning, with the clock still ticking, the president had second thoughts.

Lashing out on Twitter, he complained that the bill failed to fully fund his border wall with Mexico, or settle the fate of hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.

"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," he said.

The bill provided $1.6 billion for border security and construction or repair of nearly 100 miles (160 kilometers) of border fencing, but that was far less than Trump had been seeking.

It also set aside the issue of the so-called "Dreamers," who are in legal limbo following the Trump administration's repeal of Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a policy instituted by former president Barack Obama that protected them from deportation.

DACA expired on March 5, but the issue is being fought in the courts. Attempts at a legislative fix collapsed in a previous round of negotiations to avert a government shutdown.

In a Congress riven by partisan feuding, passage early Friday of the massive bill to fund the US government through September was considered a rare achievement.

The centerpiece was a big increase in US defense spending to $700 billion dollars, up $61 billion, and a 10 percent hike in domestic spending, which would rise to $591 billion.

But it came with last minute fights in a tumultuous late night session, after one of Trump's fellow Republicans, Senator Rand Paul, refused to allow a quick vote, only to relent.

Five times since October, lawmakers have had to pass stopgap funding legislation to keep the government's lights on. Twice this year the government was allowed to slip into shutdown.

A third lapse would be deeply embarrassing for a Republican-controlled Congress facing midterm elections in November.</s>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump signed Congress’ newly passed $1.3 trillion spending bill on Friday, ending several hours of confusion spurred by a tweeted veto threat that raised the specter of a government shutdown.

Trump said he had signed the bill, despite his qualms on some issues, because a $60 billion increase in military spending had convinced him it was a worthwhile compromise.

“But I say to Congress I will never sign another bill like this again,” he told reporters. “I’m not going to do it again.”

White House and Capitol Hill aides had been left scrambling earlier in the day after Trump criticized the six-month spending bill, despite prior assurances from the administration that he would sign it ahead of a looming midnight deadline.

“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,” Trump wrote on Twitter at 9 a.m. EDT.

But by early afternoon, he appeared before reporters in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House to announce he had signed the measure.

“There are a lot of things I’m unhappy about in this bill,” he said, patting the more than 2,000 pages of the legislation stacked on a purple box beside him.

It was unclear how seriously Republican leaders took Trump’s shutdown threat. Neither Speaker Paul Ryan nor Senate Leader Mitch McConnell commented publicly on it.

Lawmakers in the Republican-dominated Senate and House of Representatives had already left Washington for a scheduled two-week spring recess, and Trump himself was scheduled on Friday to fly to Florida for a weekend at his private resort.

Trump has been frustrated that Congress has not turned over funding to make good on his campaign promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The bill includes $1.6 billion for six month’s of work on the project but he had sought $25 billion for it.

Trump also has been at odds with Democrats in Congress over the fate of Dreamer immigrants - those brought to the United States illegally when they were children.

Trump canceled the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that gives work permits to the Dreamers and protects them from deportation. The decision is currently tied up in court cases.

He offered to extend the protections, tied to a sweeping set of changes to immigration laws, but subsequently rejected bipartisan offers from lawmakers.

As the six-month spending budget deal was coming together, there had been reports Trump had balked at the bill and had to be persuaded by Ryan to support it.

The conservative wing of Trump’s party had panned the bill because of its spending increases and some deficit hawks cheered Trump’s Friday morning threat to veto it.</s>WASHINGTON–Congress approved a $1.3-trillion spending bill after hours of wrangling and a flurry of unsuccessful Democratic efforts to force legislators to take up a measure to protect young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children.

The vote – late Thursday morning for the House and early Friday for the Senate – came as legislators faced a Friday deadline for a government shutdown. It also came just hours after the release of the 2,232-page bill, meaning that few voting on the measure had a clear idea of what it included, as members openly admitted.

The measure, which passed 256 to 167 in the House and 65 to 32 in the Senate, will go to President Donald Trump, who has promised to sign it. The Senate vote was delayed over objections from a number of senators including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who complained leaders were trying to push through the bill.

Paul forced an hours-long shutdown in February over a similar complaint that leaders were ramming through a complicated bill.

Supporters of this bill, which will fund the government through the end of September, said it was the best possible outcome in the current partisan climate.

"It is no way a perfect bill," Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said as he introduced it as a bipartisan achievement. "That, I think I learned a long time ago, is hard to get through and signed by the president."

Before the House vote, Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., hefted a foot-tall stack of papers that, along with a second similar-sized stack, represented the bill and its backup documentation. He slammed them onto a table.

"I ask any member, any member of this House, to join me in the well if you've read this bill," Hoyer thundered as he demanded a delay in the voting. "No one is joining me. Ladies and gentlemen of America, I have not read this bill."

Democrats sought to derail the measure to force the House to vote on their long-delayed effort to protect the young immigrants known as "Dreamers" from deportation. They had been protected by an Obama administration program that President Trump canceled, but that has been kept operating under a temporary court order pending legal challenges.

But no deal acceptable to Democrats, Republicans and Trump could be put together by the deadline for inclusion in the massive spending bill. Republicans have refused a simple up-or-down vote on protections for Dreamers, and Trump has demanded full funding for his proposed border wall as well as cuts in legal immigration.

"When will they have their moment of opportunity, a reprieve from worrying, from looking over their shoulders every day?" asked Rep. Darren Soto, D-Fla. "When will the Dreamers finally get to dream?"

House and Senate negotiators reached tentative agreement late Wednesday on a deal for the spending bill, which significantly boosts military and domestic spending even as it puts off several issues on which legislators could not find a compromise.

Among the spending was what Republicans described as the largest boost to the military in 14 years, as well as additional money for domestic programs such as school safety, transportation, education, science and the financing of efforts to blunt opioid abuse.

In a moment that was somewhat jarring given past Republican efforts to curb domestic spending, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., lauded the measure's inclusion of spending for child care programs, scientific research and other items.

"Money well spent," he said.

The appropriations bill followed a February deal in which leaders agreed to add tens of billions of dollars to military and non-military spending over the next two years. The new spending levels, if approved by both houses, will begin Saturday.

Republicans pushed the bill as a way to make up for military cutbacks under Obama-era budget deals. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., introducing the bill in his chamber, noted that it included a 2.4 percent salary increase for service members.

"This has been a top priority on our side of the aisle," he said.

The measure also included a host of measures that gained ground after several recent mass shootings. They included strengthening the national background check system, financing efforts to train school officials to spot potential assailants before they act, and a statement that gives the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention permission to research the effect of gun violence. Since 1996, a spending measure had been interpreted as banning gun research.

Even as members lauded themselves for passage of the long-overdue measure – the funding year has already included five resolutions to keep the government running and two separate shutdowns – antipathy about both the process and the spending included in it was obvious.

"It's not what's in the bill that I have a problem with, it's what I don't know is in the bill," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. "This place is broken, this process stinks."

For some Republicans, the combination of heightened military spending and domestic funding demanded by Democrats was too much. Not only Democrats but some Republicans on Thursday noted that had the bill been put forth under Democratic control of Congress or the White House, Republicans would have reacted with disdain.

Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee who is retiring, said the spending bill could serve as evidence that the Republican Party had "lost its soul."

"It does have to be a wake-up call for people as to whether that's the case," he said. "I'm discouraged about where we are today. I'm discouraged that we continue to be engaged in generational theft."

Trump, whose proposed budget was largely ignored by the congressional negotiators, signaled through aides on Thursday that he would sign the measure once it is approved by the Senate.

"Is it perfect? No," said Mick Mulvaney, Trump's budget director. "Were we ever going to get that? No. That's not how the process works."</s>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump signed Congress’ newly passed $1.3 trillion spending bill on Friday, ending suspense over a surprising threat he made hours earlier to veto the budget and shut down the federal government.

In the latest episode of the Republican president throwing his White House, Congress and the federal government off balance, Trump had threatened in an early morning tweet to kill the government funding deal.

Initially, it had been a foregone conclusion that Trump would sign the ahead of a midnight deadline to keep the government running.

Trump used the threat to draw attention to his displeasure about immigration issues, although he said the bill would boost funding to the military, one of his top priorities.

“There are a lot of things I’m unhappy about in this bill,” he told reporters, patting the more than 2,000 pages of the bill stacked on a purple box beside him in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.

“I will never sign another bill like this again,” he said. “Nobody read it. It’s only hours old.”

The tweeted veto threat had caught Trump’s own aides by surprise, as well as lawmakers in the Republican-dominated Senate and House of Representatives, who had already left Washington for a scheduled two-week spring recess. Trump himself was scheduled on Friday to fly to Florida for a weekend at his private resort.

It was unclear how seriously Republican leaders took Trump’s shutdown threat and neither Speaker Paul Ryan nor Senate Leader Mitch McConnell commented publicly on it.

Trump has been frustrated that Congress has not turned over funding to make good on his campaign promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The bill includes $1.6 billion for six month’s of work on the project but he had sought $25 billion for it.

Trump also has been at odds with Democrats in Congress over the fate of Dreamer immigrants - those brought to the United States illegally when they were children.

Trump canceled the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that gives work permits to the Dreamers and protects them from deportation. The decision is currently tied up in court cases.

He offered to extend the protections, tied to a sweeping set of changes to immigration laws, but subsequently rejected bipartisan offers from lawmakers.

As the six-month spending deal was coming together, there had been reports Trump had balked at the deal and had to be persuaded by Ryan to support it.

The Conservative wing of Trump’s party had panned the bill because of its spending increases and some deficit hawks cheered Trump’s threat to veto it.</s>U.S. President Donald Trump signed Congress' newly passed $1.3 trillion spending bill on Friday, ending suspense over a surprising threat he made hours earlier to veto the budget and shut down the federal government.
The United States government avoids another government shutdown when President Trump signs the 1.3 Trillion dollar omnibus spending bill into law. This bill ensures no more shutdown threats until October 1, 2018.