The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a partial funding measure for the federal government that aims to postpone the specter of budget paralysis until early March.
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The House of Representatives must now vote on the same text and, if approved, will send it to Joe Biden's desk for promulgation before midnight Friday evening, the date on which funding for part of the state expires.
Otherwise, thousands of civil servants would be forced into technical unemployment, including thousands of air traffic controllers.
American elected officials have been under pressure to vote quickly on the measure to avoid that famous partial “shutdown,” while Washington faces a blizzard on Friday and the House of Representatives has already canceled votes scheduled for that day. There.
This bill will allow the government to continue funding government spending through early March, giving elected officials time to agree on a larger budget and the details of spending.
“If both parties continue to work together in good faith, we can avoid a shutdown without last-minute whims or unnecessary anxiety for so many Americans,” said Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
After tough negotiations
Congress' repeated inability to pass a budget for the fiscal year (which began four months ago) highlights the dysfunction within the American institutional apparatus.
And short-term financing measures are often used to avoid budget paralysis.
The text adopted on Thursday was the subject of tough negotiations between the Republicans, the majority in the lower house, and the Democrats, the majority in the upper house.
Dozens of elected House Republicans from the ultra-conservative fringe are expected to vote against the temporary measure. However, expected support from elected Democrats should allow adoption.
In early January, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson announced an agreement with Democrats on the total size of the federal budget for fiscal year 2024, setting a cap on federal spending at around $1.7 trillion.
The disagreement between the two parties concerns expenditure items.
Joe Biden therefore formulated a request for an additional $106 billion in the budget, mainly to help Ukraine and, to a lesser extent, Israel.
Leaders of both parties in the Senate are supporters of supporting Kiev, but a number of Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives say such support is not in the interests of the United States.
Another sensitive issue: the influx of migrants at the border with Mexico.
Both Republicans and Democrats agree on the existence of a crisis, but differ on how to respond. The former particularly want to restrict the right to asylum and increase deportation measures.