23 March 2018•Update: 24 March 2018
By Ovunc Kutlu
NEW YORK
President Donald Trump signed a spending bill Friday that averted a government shutdown just hours before a midnight deadline.
"I said to Congress, ‘I will never sign another bill like this again,’" Trump said, adding there are multiple topics in the bill that he is "unhappy" about.
The bill was passed by the Republican-controlled Congress despite a threat by Trump to veto the it. He earlier wrote on Twitter he was considering not signing the bill, which could have led to another government shutdown and the third during his administration.
He said, "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," in his Twitter post.
He was referring to the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals -- the young people who came to the U.S. illegally as children and have had their legal status in thrown into limbo when Trump decided to end the program last September.
Trump said Friday the President Barack Obama-era program have been “totally abandoned” by Congress and blamed the Democrats.
The president was seeking a deal on DACA in exchange for funding for his $25 billion wall along the southern U.S. border with Mexico.
The bill singed Friday includes just $1.6 billion spending for border security and does not allow the wall prototypes to be built, nor provides money for the project.
Trump said "very seriously," considered vetoing the bill and added "there are a lot of things that we shouldn't have had in this bill, but we were in a sense forced if we want to build our military."
The $1.3 trillion spending bill includes giver $700 billion to the military -- a $66 billion above 2017 levels, and $591 billion to domestic agencies.
It funds the government through the end of the fiscal year which ends Sep. 30 and is widely believed will be the last major piece of legislation Congress will pass until the congressional elections in November.
