Congress approved an extension for budget negotiations and narrowly avoided an administration shutdown. The twist proves the worries about the continuation of support for Ukraine, writes US correspondent Iida Tikka.
Iida Tikka
WASHINGTON The weekend’s suspense drama stretched to the chalk lines as the US Congress negotiated the country’s budget.
If no agreement had been reached, the administration would have gone into lockdown. On Friday, notices about the expected layoffs had already been sent to government employees.
However, late at night, the Congress agreed on a 45-day extension. The deadlock was avoided, but at a heavy price for Europe: the package does not include any additional support for Ukraine.
The extension budget package was advantageous for the Democrats, as the Republicans were not allowed to carry through the drastic cuts they proposed.
Still, the real winners were the former president Donald Trump’s subordinates who showed their strength in the heart of decision-making.
The state budget needs approval by the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the President for it to take effect.
Power is currently split between the two parties, with Republicans holding the majority in the House of Representatives and Democrats holding the Senate and the White House.
The situation is typical after mid-term elections. Then the opposition party that lost the presidential election often wins the election, at least in the lower house of Congress.
In practice, since the last mid-term elections, it has been certain that the budget tightening will be fierce, and many have been bracing for a shutdown for months.
The last time the administration drifted into a prolonged shutdown was in 2019, when the Democrats who held power in the House of Representatives after the midterm elections refused to fund then-President Donald Trump’s border wall with more than five billion dollarsand neither party was ready to budge.
This time it was exceptional, because the budget negotiations were not stalled by a deadlock between the parties, but by a problem within the Republican Party.
A small part of the most radical Republicans had made drastic demands that even the Republicans could not agree on. They demand, among other things, that the aid directed to Ukraine be significantly reduced, more money for the construction of the border wall and that the “political witch hunts” of the Ministry of Justice be prevented.
Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy tried to the last to introduce proposals to the House of Representatives that would please the radical wing.
In the end, however, he put a package to the vote on Saturday that was more to the liking of the Democrats: none of the cuts demanded by the Republicans were made to the overtime budget. The package received more support from the Democrats than from McCarthy’s own party in the congressional votes.
It puts McCarthy’s political future at stake. Republican representative Matt Gaetz announced immediately after the votes that he intended to propose a vote of confidence aimed at ousting McCarthy.
The Trump wing of the House of Representatives is also largely the reason why support for Ukraine was left out of the package.
– Ukraine is not our 51st state. Joe Biden treats it as such, Republican Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene summed up the extreme wing mentality.
President Biden proposed a new, $20 billion aid package for Ukraine President of Ukraine to Volodymyr Zelensky while visiting Washington more than a week ago. Now this support package must be voted on separately.
The majority of congressmen from both parties are still in favor of supporting Ukraine, but preventing the automatic continuation of support is worrying for Europe.
US support is no longer a given.