Trump signs omnibus spending bill

President Trump, despite an earlier threat to veto the legislation, signed a $1.3 trillion fiscal year 2018 omnibus spending bill into law today, announcing he was only doing so because it contains a significant increase in defense funding.

"My highest duty is to keep America safe," he said at the White House. "As a matter of national security, I've signed this omnibus budget bill."

Trump, however, said he would never sign such a bill again.

"Nobody read it," he said. "It's only hours old. It became so big because we need to take care of our military and because the Democrats who don't believe in that added things they wanted."

Trump also asked Congress to eliminate the Senate filibuster rule and to provide him with line-item veto authority for government spending bills. Both requests would be major changes for Congress and have been successfully resisted in the past.

"We have to get a lot of great legislation approved and without the filibuster rule it will happen just like magic," Trump said.

The president was flanked by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who pledged to spend the money wisely, as well as Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and other senior officials.

"We in the military are humbled and grateful to the American people," Mattis said.

Earlier in the day, Trump tweeted that he was considering vetoing the bill because it did not include as much money as he wanted for a wall on the southern border or address 800,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.