US Congress narrowly avoids country’s budgetary paralysis – 01/18/2024 at 11:52 pm

The US Congress on Thursday adopted a long-awaited temporary budget measure for the federal state, thus dispelling the much-feared specter of a “shutdown”, a partial budgetary paralysis that would have affected some non-essential services of the administration.

After the Senate earlier in the afternoon, the House of Representatives adopted text to extend some federal government funding, which was set to expire at midnight on Friday, for six weeks, until March 1.

The text must still be promoted by Joe Biden, a formality.

Without this text, thousands of civil servants would be forced into technical unemployment, especially air traffic controllers.

American elected officials were under pressure to vote quickly on the measure and thus avoid the famous partial “shutdown”, while Washington is expecting snow on Friday and the House of Representatives has already canceled a vote scheduled for that day.

The text adopted by Congress allows the government to continue financing state spending until early March, giving elected officials time to agree on long-term budgets and spending details.

“We have good news for America: There will be no shutdown on Friday,” Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told his colleagues during a speech.

“Because both parties have worked together, the government will remain open, services will not be disrupted, we will avoid an unnecessary disaster,” he added.

– Aid to Ukraine –

The repeated inability of Congress to adopt a budget for the fiscal year (which began four months ago) reflects the problems within the American institutional apparatus.

And short-term financing measures, like the one adopted Thursday, are often used to avoid budgetary paralysis.

The text voted on Thursday was the subject of tough negotiations between Republicans, the majority in the lower house, and Democrats, who hold the majority in the upper house.

In early January, Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson announced an agreement with Democrats on the state budget total for fiscal year 2024, setting a cap on federal spending of about $1.7 trillion.

The difference between the two parties relates to items of expenditure.

Joe Biden thus prepared a request for an additional $106 billion in the budget, primarily to aid Ukraine, and to a lesser extent Israel.

Leaders of both parties in the Senate support supporting Kiev, but a number of Republican lawmakers in the House say such support is not in the interests of the United States.

Another thorny topic: the influx of migrants along the Mexican border. Republicans and Democrats alike agree on the existence of a crisis but differ on how to respond. The former specifically seeks to limit the right to asylum and strengthen deportation measures.