The White House can breathe a big sigh of relief. The United States avoided the paralysis of its federal administration at the last minute, with the adoption by the Senate, just three hours before the “shutdown”, of an emergency measure allowing its financing to temporarily continue.
In a last-minute turnaround, the House of Representatives first passed this text proposed by the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, a last-ditch attempt to avoid paralysis. Adopted with 335 yes (91 no) in the House, it was then approved by 88 senators against 9, avoiding in extremis a “shutdown”, which would have put civil servants on technical unemployment and cut food aid to certain beneficiaries.
Biden maintains pressure on aid to Ukraine
Joe Biden immediately welcomed the agreement reached in the Senate and called on Congress to quickly approve aid to Ukraine. A stumbling block between Democrats and many Republicans, this is for the moment largely absent from the text.
The emergency measure passed by Congress provides that the administration continues to be funded for forty-five days. If it had not been adopted before midnight, the world’s largest economy would have slowed down this 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 closed door.
Lawmakers must now consider a separate bill for $24 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, which Joe Biden wanted to see included in the budget. A vote could take place early next week, according to American media.
McCarthy under pressure from Trumpists
“What Russia did is wrong. But I think that whatever we do, we have to define what a victory means and what the plan should be,” McCarthy told the press. “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. Elected at the cost of numerous negotiations with the Trumpists, Kevin McCarthy risks his seat in these negotiations.