(Washington) The US Senate on Thursday passed the federal budget bill, a text that provides $ 45 billion in aid to Ukraine and which still requires a vote in the House of Representatives.
This legislative version of 1700 billion dollars should be adopted Friday without major jolts in the lower house in order to avoid a paralysis of the State (the famous “shutdown”), which could intervene the evening even if no text was approved by Congress.
“This bill absolutely needs to pass because it will benefit families, veterans, our national security and even the health of our democratic institutions,” Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer said ahead of the vote.
The bill amends a law dating from the 19e century in order to stipulate that the American vice-president cannot intervene directly in the certification of the electoral results.
Donald Trump had used the ambiguities of the old text to suggest that Mike Pence, his vice-president, could have stopped Joe Biden’s coming to power after a victory that the incumbent Republican did not want to recognize – one of the elements which led to the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Mr. Trump, again a candidate for 2024, on Thursday described the text as “abomination”, “sold” to the “far left”, to the elites of the capital and to the lobbies.
New majority in January
This budget must finance the functioning of the American federal state — law enforcement, diplomacy, armed forces, economic policy, etc. — until September 2023.
With a Democratic majority in the Chamber for a few more days, and the day after a visit by Volodymyr Zelensky warmly welcomed by the vast majority of parliamentarians, the positive outcome of the passage of the text is hardly in doubt.
Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the Republicans in the House, called on the elected officials of his camp to vote against the bill in order to postpone the vote and benefit from greater leeway when the holidays return, when the new Republican majority in the House, resulting from the midterm elections, will take office.
But Republican senators largely ignored it, giving Democrats nearly 20 votes to pass the text Thursday afternoon, 68 to 29.
On Wednesday evening, a disagreement on immigration had postponed the adoption of the text for a few hours – a subject finally excluded from the vote so as not to block its rapid passage.