Around 2 a.m. ET on Thursday morning, Senate Republicans approved Donald Trump’s rescissions package, clawing back roughly $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund local public television and radio stations around the country, and roughly $8 billion from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Nearly 24 hours later, House Republicans, also voting in the middle of the night, followed suit........

Around the same time, a reporter asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, “Why would any Democrat vote for a bipartisan spending bill if Republicans can turn around and claw back the money the next day?” She barely even tried to answer, referring to funding for USAID and public broadcasting as “crap,” before moving on.

One of Leavitt’s powerful colleagues went much further. Politico reported:

Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought isn’t interested in giving assurances to lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the White House will abide by any bipartisan spending agreements made this year. ‘The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan,’ Vought told reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Thursday.

Leavitt told reporters that the White House budget director was endorsing more bipartisanship, which is precisely the opposite of what Vought actually said — twice......

This isn’t complicated: Passing spending bills that keep the government’s lights on tends to require bipartisan votes. It’s against this backdrop that the White House has effectively told Democrats, “We’re going to keep undoing spending the president doesn’t like; we want less bipartisanship; and we’re largely indifferent to Congress’ existence.”

Bipartisan negotiations on spending packages were difficult before. They’re vastly harder now.