The US Congress approved an expansion of the federal budget on Wednesday, in a rare show of unity between the parties, preventing the paralysis of the US administration as Thanksgiving and the holiday season approach. of year.
After the US House of Representatives on Tuesday, the Senate voted on Wednesday by an overwhelming majority of 87 votes to 11 an agreement to extend until mid-January the budget, which was due to expire at midnight, on the night of Friday to Saturday.
This extension, the result of tough negotiations on Capitol Hill, does not take into account aid to Israel and Ukraine, respectively at war against Hamas and Russia, and to Taiwan.
If it had not been adopted, 1.5 million civil servants would have lost their salaries, air traffic disrupted, while visitors to national parks would have found their doors closed.
Most elected officials from both camps did not want this extremely unpopular situation, the famous “shutdown”, especially as Thanksgiving approached on November 23.
The Democrats wanted a huge envelope for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan but ultimately, each aid will be treated separately at the request of the Republicans who are for some hesitant regarding the military aid of 61 billion dollars to kyiv. However, they are the first to demand massive support for Israel and a firm attitude towards Beijing.
“Far from perfect”
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer acknowledged that the bill is “far from perfect” but that it achieves Democrats’ goal of avoiding a shutdown.
The dissensions in Congress – between Republicans in the majority in the House and Democrats, in the Senate – are such that elected officials are currently unable to vote on one-year budgets, contrary to what most economies in the world do.
Instead, the United States must settle for a series of one- or two-month mini-budgets.
Each time one of these budgets expires, everything has to be done again: acrimonious negotiations, commented on extensively on social networks, threats, then a series of votes, in the House, in the Senate…
The latest negotiations around the American federal budget, at the end of September, plunged Congress into chaos.
Trumpist elected officials, furious that the then Republican Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, had reached a last-minute agreement with the Democratic camp, dismissed him on October 3, an unprecedented situation.
This time, the agreement on the table proposes to extend the budget at two different deadlines: one part until mid-January, the other until the beginning of February.
It was presented by the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, unknown to the general public and with very limited experience within the Republican staff.
He is in any case forced to deal, like his predecessor, with a handful of Trumpists, supporters of a very strict budgetary orthodoxy, and the Democrats, who refuse to have the country’s economic policy dictated to them by lieutenants of the former president.
These are the same conservative elected officials who pushed the United States to the brink four months ago.
The world’s leading power then avoided a payment default at the last minute following long negotiations between the Biden administration and the conservatives.