The US federal government will be able to continue operating beyond this Friday evening. The elected representatives of Congress reached an agreement to finance it and avoid a “shutdown”.
It has become a classic scenario in Congress: the fear ofa paralysis of federal agencies, lack of funding and, ultimately, in extremis, a vote that allows them to continue to operate, explains our correspondent in Washington, Guillaume Naudin.
It happened again this Thursday. The US Senate adopted a bill to finance the federal state until February 18, thus avoiding a partial shutdown of administrations. The Democrat-controlled Senate voted 69 to 28 in favor of the bill, giving President Joe Biden time to sign the measure before federal funding expires at midnight Friday current.
” I’m glad that in the end, coolness won out. I thank the members of the Senate for allowing us to avoid an avoidable, unnecessary and costly closure. Said the leader of the Democratic majority in the upper house, Chuck Schumer, after reaching an agreement with the Republicans to allow the passage of the law.
If the Senate vote had failed, hundreds of thousands of federal employees could have lost their jobs, resulting in the suspension or reduction of many federal programs. Senate Democrats have thwarted the attempt by a handful of conservative Republicans to block passage of the bill if it did not include an amendment to take away funds Joe Biden wants to allocate to vaccinating employees against the Covid-19.
But the next few days will still be busy for the Congress. The next step will be to raise the debt ceiling to prevent the country from defaulting in mid-December, then to vote on the social and climate spending plan. It promises to be more complicated.