Impending US shutdown: the time for an agreement is dwindling

A new shutdown threatens in the USA – Congress has to pass a bridging budget by midnight. President Biden’s major infrastructure and social packages could fail.

Krystle Kirkpatrick from Utah could do without these worries: The mother of two works for the US tax authority IRS. Now she is threatened with unpaid compulsory leave – as in 2019. “This is not about politics. This is about food for my children,” says Kirkpatrick on NBC. “You can’t play with that.”

The political tug of war in Washington is actually reminiscent of a poker game. And as far as the impending shutdown is concerned, the Democrats have now blinked: In the next few hours, the Senate wants to vote on a bridging budget that will keep the government going at least until December, according to majority leader Chuck Schumer.

This is good news for the approximately two million employees of the US government and for all Americans who, for example, need advice from the social welfare authorities, are waiting for their tax assessment or want to go on vacation to a national park.

It’s a setback for the Democrats. They really wanted to kill two birds with one stone: bridging the budget and at the same time either suspending or raising the debt ceiling. But the Republicans don’t go along with that.

Pithy words from McConnell

Opposition leader Mitch McConnell said earlier this week that there was no chance his party would help the Democrats raise the credit limit – just so they could immediately whip through a “socialist spending orgy” that harms families and only benefits China.

This means that the USA is still threatened with insolvency until mid-October. For the first time in history, the country could not service its debts, warns Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The consequences would be devastating: Pensioners would no longer receive a pension, soldiers would no longer receive wages, interest rates would rise, assets would be destroyed, a financial crisis likely.

Three weeks left

To prevent this, the Democrats now have just under three weeks – and how exactly they want to go about it, the head of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, left open yesterday. Instead, he blamed the Republicans: Their irresponsible refusal to raise the debt ceiling was unsurprising – but disappointing nonetheless.

Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden is worried about completely different things: The two major legislative proposals in his first term in office are threatened with failure due to opposition from his own party. It’s about an infrastructure package with money for roads, bridges, the rail network and faster Internet of a trillion dollars. And a second bill of over 3.5 trillion – for the fight against climate change and social spending for families.

The left wing of his party just wants to pass both laws in parallel. There they fear that more conservative party friends would otherwise later make compromises on the social package.

Majority questionable, agreement not in sight

The House of Representatives was supposed to vote on the infrastructure package on Thursday. But although the president negotiated personally with the skeptics all Wednesday, an agreement is not yet in sight and a majority is in doubt. In any case, his spokeswoman Jen Psaki did not want to venture a prognosis for the outcome of Polit-Poker yesterday.

It’s a bit like a TV series, says Psaki. But which? “‘Westwing’ if it goes well. ‘Veep the Vice President’ if it doesn’t.”