Accessibility links

Breaking News

Trump Signs $1T Government Spending Bill

update

FILE - Copies of President Donald Trump's first budget are displayed at the Government Printing Office in Washington, March, 16, 2017.
FILE - Copies of President Donald Trump's first budget are displayed at the Government Printing Office in Washington, March, 16, 2017.

President Donald Trump on Friday signed a $1 trillion spending bill that keeps the federal government funded through September and averts a government shutdown.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed the signing of the legislation, which Congress passed overwhelmingly.

The bill keeps the government funded through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends September 30, and prevents a shutdown of many parts of the federal government that would have begun at midnight.

The legislative victory took weeks of negotiations between congressional leaders and the White House.

The final legislation boosts U.S. military spending and provides increased funding for U.S. border security, but it sidesteps many of the promises Trump and Republican lawmakers made.

It provides no money for constructing a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, and it continues funding for Planned Parenthood, a women's health organization that performs abortions.

Many conservative Republicans saw the bill as a lost opportunity that gave minority Democrats too many concessions.

The appropriations bill was supposed to have been agreed upon by last October 1, but it was delayed until now, with Congress passing a succession of stopgap measures.

Trump praised the spending bill on Twitter earlier this week, but also said the government "needs a good 'shutdown' in September," when lawmakers will be debating the 2018 funding plan.

The U.S. government has not shut down since October 2013. Many agencies were closed for 16 days in a policy and funding dispute over former President Barack Obama's national health care reform legislation.

  • 16x9 Image

    VOA News

    The Voice of America provides news and information in more than 40 languages to an estimated weekly audience of over 326 million people. Stories with the VOA News byline are the work of multiple VOA journalists and may contain information from wire service reports.

XS
SM
MD
LG