Leaders of the US Congress agreed on Saturday to avoid a partial government shutdown starting next week. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have agreed on a legislative measure that extends the government's spending capacity through March.
So far, the administration has had funds to keep some of its organizations fully operational until February 2nd. Incidentally, the deadline expired next Friday at midnight. The new measure, known as “continued settlement”, allows payments by the managing authorities to continue until March 1st and otherwise until March 8th.
Johnson plans to hold a meeting with his congressional representatives this Sunday to discuss the details of the pact.
Schumer and the President of the House of Representatives took a first step last weekend to prevent a partial government shutdown when they announced a pact setting a spending cap on the twelve budget bills that finance the functioning of the state.
This pact set the cap at $1.66 trillion, of which $886,000 million was earmarked for defense spending. Another 69,000 million would be used to adjust for inflation and 704,000 million for items unrelated to defense. However, it has not been determined how exactly these costs should be distributed, which is at the heart of the dispute between the two parties.
And although the leaders of both houses had managed to reach an agreement, the hard wing of the Republicans in the House of Representatives had criticized the measure. Some of its constituent lawmakers demanded concessions from Democrats on tightening border controls in exchange for avoiding paralyzing the government.
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Over the course of this week, these MPs' protests appeared to jeopardize the delicate negotiations: Johnson has a very narrow majority in the House of Commons and needs almost every one of his votes to move forward with any measure. However, on Friday he assured that the agreements would be adhered to.
The agreement reached this Saturday between Schumer and Johnson extends by a month the deadline during which lawmakers can debate and reach an agreement on the distribution of funds and allocations contained in each of the dozen budget bills.
Democrats and Republicans agreed to a second extension last November to avoid a government shutdown similar to the one that cost Johnson's predecessor Kevin McCarthy his job in September. At that time, it was decided to extend funding for some of the organizations until this Friday and for the rest until February 2nd. Among the departments whose operations were at risk within days was the Transportation Ministry, whose paralysis threatened to sow chaos in the country's air traffic.
Among the budget items being discussed by both parties is the Democratic administration's request for a fund of more than $110 billion, including more than $64 billion to help Ukraine repel Russian invasion. Another 14 billion would support Israel in its offensive in the Gaza Strip. And $6 billion would be spent on the border with Mexico.
In order to approve these funds, Republicans are calling for tightening border control measures. Delegations from both parties have been negotiating for weeks to find common ground but have so far failed to make much progress.
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