The threat of a federal government shutdown is resurfacing in the United States two months before the presidential election, with a vote scheduled for Wednesday in Congress having been postponed due to a lack of sufficient majority among Republicans who are at loggerheads over the issue.
“We’re going to be working on this throughout the weekend,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, said Wednesday in announcing the postponement.
He is facing a backlash from elected officials in his own camp, worried about seeing the budget limit pushed back again and who want greater fiscal rigor.
Mike Johnson thus failed to win the support of a sufficient majority within his ranks to pass, without the help of the Democratic opposition, this six-month extension of the government’s budget.
The 2025 budget must be passed by Congress by the end of September — the end of the fiscal year — to keep all services funded.
Otherwise, it would be a “shutdown”: millions of civil servants on technical unemployment, certain food aids suspended, air traffic disrupted, among other things.
Another piece of legislation that was added to Donald Trump’s budget under pressure would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections.
“I will shut down the government in the blink of an eye […] “If they don’t put it in the bill,” threatened the former president, who has immense influence over the Republican group in the House and continues to claim without proof that he was deceived by electoral fraud in 2020.
The Biden administration opposes it, pointing out that noncitizen voting is already illegal and that there is no evidence that undocumented immigrants participate in elections.
At least 10 Republicans had spoken out against the proposal presented on Wednesday. However, this majority only has the margin to do without the vote of four elected officials to pass a text without the votes of the opposition.
In the Senate, the Democrats in power are considering issuing an ultimatum to the Republicans in the House: adopt a text pushing back the deadline to the end of the year, or provoke a shutdown.
But with less than two months to go until the election that will renew the entire House of Representatives, some Republicans who are on a tightrope are worried that this unpopular prospect could threaten their chances of being re-elected.
Mike Johnson warned that there is no plan B in case of failure.
He himself hopes to be re-elected in November, and may therefore seek an exit rather than risk a failed vote.