U.S. House of Representatives passes bill to fund govt.

House Speaker Paul Ryan says, “We’re making very good progress with our members and our president has been instrumental in that”.

Vulnerable Senate Democrats got a political gift Thursday – a chance to vote for a budget crafted by both parties and endorsed by President Donald Trump, a budget they can tout to their bases and the crucial centrist voters who control their political fates.

A number of House Republicans routinely oppose big spending bills. They all voted for the budget Thursday.

With this fiscal year’s funding resolved, confrontations over the fiscal 2018 budget loom. Pelosi says the latest bill is being pushed through without a revised estimate from congressional budget analysts. The AMA issued a statement saying Upton’s changes “tinker at the edges without remedying the fundamental failing of the bill – that millions of Americans will lose their health insurance as a direct result”.

Yet Trump’s morning tweets hardly signaled a win and came after Democrats gleefully claimed victory in denying him much of his wish list despite being the minority party. “We are not going to do that”, he told reporters.

House GOP leaders stayed quiet Tuesday as they were asked about prospects for a vote. The government was now only funded through the end of this week on an extension that was passed last week.

Republicans claim victory because the measure boosts military funding, breaking the longstanding Democratic position that new spending must be equally split among defence and non-defence expenditures.

The House of Representatives is set to vote May 3 on a bipartisan funding bill to keep the government open through the end of fiscal year 2017.

The 309-118 vote sends the bill to the Senate in time for them to act to avert a government shutdown at midnight Friday.

The bill approved by the House on Wednesday includes $15 billion of a $30 billion request from Trump for extra funding for defense programs and combat operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

Democrats also backed the measure, which protects popular domestic programs such as education, medical research and grants to state and local governments from cuts sought by Trump – while dropping a host of GOP agenda items found in earlier versions.

Mulvaney also acknowledged the funding won’t allow the White House to build “new wall” – certainly not the massive concrete barriers Trump has so often promised his supporters – but unveiled the administration’s plans to fix and replace existing fencing with a “see-through steel wall”.

After bragging that the bill increases military spending, Trump said, “And we didn’t do any touting like the Democrats did, by the way”. No Democrats voted for the bill. Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Billy Long, R-Mo., could breathe new life into the sagging Republican push to deliver their long-standing promise repeal former President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.

One of the key sticking points sparking party infighting between moderates and conservatives: how patients with pre-existing conditions would be covered. Hours earlier, he’d announced opposition to the legislation, dealing it a damaging blow because he is a respected authority on health care. Yet to get anything passed they need Democratic support, as some conservatives routinely refuse to endorse spending bills. While the White House is spinning the bill as a win, it actually passed with more support from Democrats than from Republicans.

At the same time, Congress is ready to give final approval to a bipartisan $1 trillion measure financing federal agencies through September.

But rather than correcting Trump’s poor leadership, his Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney blamed Democrats and intensified the president’s comments.