Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Tuesday that President Trump would sign a spending bill that does not include funding for his border wall.
Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, who asked whether the president would be willing to even sign a bill that didn’t include funding for his border wall, Mulvaney replied, “Yeah, because I think the bill, at least the offer that we received from the Democrats the last couple days included a good bit of money for border security.”
While he said Democrats have threatened a government shutdown over the actual wall, “but there’s a lot of things we agree on, both parties do, in securing the border, and it allows the president to follow through on his promise to make that border more secure.”
This does not mean, however, that the Trump administration will not follow through on its promise to build a wall, he said.
Their agreement comes as the midnight Friday deadline approaches, and a possible government shutdown looms.Mulvaney said the administration doesn’t plan “to back down” from its promise to build a border wall.
"We just thought that it would be a good first step to get these things that everybody agrees on and take that idea of a government shutdown off the table," Mulvaney continued.
Mulvaney said budget discussions for Fiscal Year 2018 will begin “as soon as this bill is signed.”
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