There will ultimately be no “shutdown”. The United States avoided the paralysis of its federal administration at the last minute, with the adoption by the Senate of an emergency measure allowing its financing to be temporarily continued. This, adopted by the American Congress, provides that the American administration continues to be funded for 45 days. However, it excludes aid to Ukraine at war requested by the White House.
In a final attempt to avoid the paralysis of the American administration, the resolution proposed at the last minute by the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, was adopted by the House before being validated by the Senate just three hours away from the “shutdown”, which would have put civil servants on technical unemployment and cut food aid to certain beneficiaries. Adopted with 335 yes (91 no) in the House, the text was then approved by 88 senators against 9.
“Tonight, bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate voted to keep government open, avoiding an unnecessary crisis that would have inflicted unnecessary suffering on millions of hardworking Americans,” welcomed US President Joe Biden in a press release.
Hundreds of thousands of American officials held their breath as the deadline approached (midnight Saturday night), because neither chamber of Congress – neither the Democratic-controlled Senate nor the House of Representatives representatives controlled by the Republicans – had not found agreement on a finance law to extend the federal state budget.
If Kevin McCarthy’s measure had not been adopted, the world’s largest economy would have slowed down on Sunday: 1.5 million civil servants would have been deprived of pay and air traffic would have been disrupted, while visitors to national parks would have found the door closed. Saturday’s vote is “a victory for the American people, and a total defeat for right-wing extremists,” said the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries.
A separate project about Ukraine
Aid to Ukraine, a stumbling block between Democrats and many Republicans, is largely absent from the text. Lawmakers are now expected to consider a separate bill for $24 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. A vote could take place early next week, according to American media.
Joe Biden immediately called on Congress to quickly approve aid to Ukraine. “I expect the President of Congress to uphold his commitment to the Ukrainian people and ensure the adoption of the support necessary to help Ukraine at this critical time,” the US president said in a statement, referring to Kevin McCarthy. The White House had initially demanded that the budget law include this $24 billion in aid.
“What Russia did is wrong. But I think whatever we do, we have to define what a victory means and what the plan should be,” Kevin McCarthy told reporters. “I think there is a real frustration across America, which sees this president ignoring the borders of the United States and being more concerned about another place,” he added, referring to this which Republicans call a “migrant crisis in the United States”.
A handful of Trumpist Republican elected officials refuse to release any new aid to kyiv, believing that these funds should be allocated to managing the migration crisis. These lieutenants of Donald Trump, who have disproportionate power due to the very small Republican majority in the House, were ordered by the former president, who could face Joe Biden in 2024, to “paralyze “the federal state unless it wins its case on “all” the budgetary issues under debate.
Under the presidency of Donald Trump, the United States experienced its longest “shutdown”, during the winter of 2018/2019. According to several estimates, the country’s GDP was then cut by more than 3 billion dollars.