Trump reverses threat to shut down US government

President Donald Trump has abandoned a threat to shut down the US government, signing off on a budget despite being "unhappy" with many of its provisions -- and warning he won't back anything similar ever again.

He later tweeted his desire to have a "line-item veto" over future bills that would allow him to remove parts he disagrees with -- a measure that would alter the balance of the government and was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1998.

A visibly aggrieved Trump capped another anarchic week by approving the USD 1.3 trillion deal passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, just hours after threatening to veto it.

He fumed that a "crazy" lawmaking process had produced a bill that "nobody read" -- but said he was signing it as a "matter of national security."
"There are a lot of things that we shouldn't have had in this bill. But we were, in a sense, forced," he said. "But I say to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again. I'm not going to do it again."
He later riffed on the same theme on Twitter, where he said: "To prevent this omnibus situation from ever happening again, I'm calling on Congress to give me a line-item veto for all govt spending bills!"
Trump's threat came after a host on conservative channel Fox News pilloried the deal as a Washington "swamp budget."