By
Ed Kilgore,
political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015
A stopgap spending bill is all teed up. What will Trump do about it?
As August begins, Senate Majority Leader John Thune would very much like to pass a stopgap spending bill to head off a potential government shutdown, confirm some Donald Trump appointees, and then send his troops home for a month or so of campaigning (for the 22 Republican senators whose terms are up this year) and/or getting in touch with constituents. Trump, his boss, wants a lot of other things to happen, most notably the debate and passage of the SAVE America Act and massive new Pentagon funding. Knowing Democrats may be able to block both these measures, Trump is especially agitated about the need for a budget resolution that would set up a party-line reconciliation bill paying some Iran war bills and incentivizing state SAVE America Act–style proof-of-citizenship requirements. The House has done all these things and already entered its own August recess. The big question now is whether Trump will let his Senate people go, too, and furthermore, allow Thune to keep open the federal government despite all the partisan battles that could shut it down.
