With President Trump taking credit for the House passing their health care bill on Thursday, he's continued his pattern of false claims that they were able to get a bill passed that would provide coverage for everyone. In fact, according to many reports, the bill contradicts itself and is very much said to be forced through the House and designed simply to be a win for Trump's agenda without his involvement. While it still has to go through the Senate and it's not known if they're going to be as easily coerced as the House, the passing of the health care bill is really another failure to go with his momentum of failures, such as the passing of the spending bill before the first week of May had even started.
Budget proposal without Trump
On Sunday, two senior congressional aides stated that Congress had closed a deal to keep the government running until September after a week when lawmakers were trying to reach a deadline to keep the government running. As Blasting News reported, lawmakers had a lot to deal with during their first week back from a two week Easter break where they would face an administration that was ready to shut down the government if they didn't get what they wanted out of the President's budget proposal. One of these was a border wall which by the beginning of the last week of April, all sides admitted that they were not going to even bother trying to fund a border wall and so they decided to push it off until September.
On Friday, April 31, Congress were able to put in a continuing resolution to prevent a government shutdown for another week. Blasting News also reported on the fact that there were still discussions on repealing Obamacare, a goal which appeared to be more difficult for Republicans to reach than they would have liked to admit, which they appeared to want to vote on during their one-week extension.
But that they were able to come to an agreement to continue to run the government until September when Congress will face another border wall request and over a weekend; it was seen as another blow to the Trump agenda. Of couse, President Trump denied that it was.
Trump didn't get what he wanted
Blasting News has also reported on the Department of Justice threatening to eliminate funding for sanctuary cities, but it's been reported that the latest Omnibus bill did not include that either, which should certainly provide some leverage to Democrats who say they will fight the Trump administration's agenda in the courts.
It also didn't cut funding to Planned Parenthood, which Republicans have been as adamant about as wanting to repeal Obamacare. On the other hand, Republicans reportedly got $1.5 billion for border security and $15 billion for defense. Blasting News also reported on Trump's budget proposal to fund the military and actually take money away from nationwide human welfare programs.
The amount provided for defense is noted as half of what Trump initially wanted and as what many would interpret as a snub at the President. Defense spending was matched with spending for those welfare programs. Democrats appropriately reveled in being able to defeat most spending on Trump's agenda and even though they're the minority party, for the first time, Congress seemed to send a signal to Americans that there was bipartisanship to passing the year's first budget bill quickly.
But the Trump administration has made it a point to target Democrats on behalf of his party. Rather than let them get the upperhand, President Trump declared that his agenda won and that he had defeated Democrats in the end.
