White House budget director Mick Mulvaney angrily ripped Democrats for "spiking the football" over the spending bill passed this week that funds the government through September, saying President Trump cut "a tremendous deal for the American people."
Mulvaney added that the Democrats wanted a shutdown to make the Trump administration look bad.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) gave celebratory statements over the $1 trillion spending deal, which includes $5 billion in new domestic spending.
Mulvaney said he had been barraged with questions over why the bill was bipartisan, given the sole GOP control of Congress. He pointed out that if a Republican-only bill were passed out of the House, it would not make it through the Senate, where it would need 60 votes, and thus, some Democratic support.
"The Dems have been trying to claim victory on this, which I think is a very strange way to look at a bipartisan discussion," he said. "If you're in a bipartisan meeting, I think it's very unusual for one group to walk out and start spiking the football and say, 'Hey, we won, we killed the other guys,' and it certainly doesn't bode very well for future discussions."
Mulvaney said it was "only fair" to show the press what was really in the bill and how Trump cut a good deal.
He touted $21 billion in additional funding for defense, as well as additional funding for border security, and he also criticized Democrats for claiming victory on health benefits for retired coal miners, which he said was a Trump priority from day one.
"One of my favorites," Mulvaney said. "The Democrats walked out of the room and said they protected the miners' health. So did the president ... We mark this as one of our victories in this particular bill."
Every Second Amendment protection that the Trump administration wanted and Democrats wanted to get rid of, he said, is still in the bill.
Like House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) earlier in the day, Mulvaney touted the end of the "parity" rules from the Obama administration, when Democrats demanded one dollar of increased discretionary spending for every extra dollar Republicans got on defense.
"We got $21 billion of new defense spending for less than $5 billion of non-defense spending," he said. "We didn't go dollar for dollar ... That's a tremendous development for this president, and a huge win from a negotiating standpoint."
Mulvaney also said there is no Obamacare bailout money in the package, no new money for Puerto Rico, and most importantly, no government shutdown.
"They wanted a shutdown. We know that," he said. "They were desperate to make this administration look like we couldn't function, like we couldn't govern."