Donald Trump has again upended conventional political wisdom by advocating a government shutdown in September, to fix a “mess” in the Senate.
The president’s tweets continued a return to wayward form after a period of relative stability. On Monday, remarks about the American civil war and the current crisis with North Korea prompted an influential historian to say that one of the “most bizarre … 24 hours in American presidential history” indicated “a confused mental state from the president”.
Trump, who campaigned as an anti-Washington outsider, expressed his frustration on Tuesday with a system of government that has so far thwarted his agenda.
Votes are expected this week on a bipartisan $1.1tn budget deal to avoid a government shutdown until the end of September. The deal contains several major wins for Democrats over Republicans.
At 9.01am, the president tweeted: “The reason for the plan negotiated between the Republicans and Democrats is that we need 60 votes in the Senate which are not there! We …”
Six minutes later, he completed the thought: “… either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!”
In the event of a shutdown, hundreds of thousands of public sector workers are sent home and national parks and museums close. The most recent shutdown was over 16 days during Barack Obama’s administration in October 2013.
Despite Republicans’ wishlist, the new spending bill contains no funding to begin building a wall on the Mexican border and does not impose major cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency or Planned Parenthood. Its $15bn boost for military spending is just half the sum Trump originally requested.
Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, the House speaker, Paul Ryan, said, with an exasperated laugh: “How many times have I had this: ‘Do you agree with a tweet this morning?’
Noting that an appropriations bill required bipartisan support – 60 votes – in the Senate to pass, he added: “We’ve got a long ways to go between now and September, but I share the president’s frustration.”
Ryan offered a different appraisal of the spending agreement. He touted an increase in funding for border security and defense as well as money for combatting opioid addiction.
On the opposite side of the Capitol, on the floor of the Senate, the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, quoted the Rolling Stones song that is regularly played at Trump’s rallies despite the band having asked him to stop using it.
“It is truly a shame that the president is degrading [the spending bill] because he didn’t get 100% of what he wanted,” Schumer said. “Bipartisanship is best summed up by the Rolling Stones: ‘You can’t always get what you want’ – or at least everything you want.”
Republicans have had to depend on Democratic votes to pass big spending bills in recent years because of opposition by fiscal conservatives in the House and the 60-vote threshold in the Senate.
Senate Republicans recently triggered the so-called “nuclear option” to remove the 60-vote filibuster threshold for the supreme court nominee Neil Gorsuch. That change allowed a final vote to approve Gorsuch with a simple majority.
Before Tuesday, Trump’s most recent tweet had been: “President Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the civil war started, saw it coming and was angry. Would never have let it happen!”
This followed an interview with the Washington Examiner in which Trump expressed confusion about the origins of the conflict and claimed that Jackson “was really angry” about it.
Trump also walked out of an interview with CBS, invited the authoritarian Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte to the White House and raised eyebrows by saying he would be “honoured” to meet the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, whom he also described as a “pretty smart cookie”.
Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, told Politico: “It seems to be among the most bizarre recent 24 hours in American presidential history. It was all just surreal disarray and a confused mental state from the president.”
(TheGuardian US)
