(Washington) The American Congress on Thursday overcame a first obstacle to escape a paralysis of the American federal services this weekend, the famous “shutdown” that elected Republicans seek to provoke in order to protest against the vaccine obligations of the Biden government.
Elected officials from the House of Representatives approved a new finance law in the afternoon in an attempt to avoid a sudden drain on federal state resources at midnight on Friday, which would force hundreds of thousands of employees out of work technical.
But this text, the result of long negotiations, must now go through the Senate stage where a single defection could prevent it from being adopted in time, the agreement of all elected officials being necessary to vote.
However, a handful of Republicans, most of them very close to Donald Trump, refuse this for the moment, arguing that the text would help finance Joe Biden’s decree which requires employees of companies with more than 100 people to be vaccinated, and which they oppose.
One of them, Senator Mike Lee of the very conservative state of Utah, defended his decision on Thursday.
“If we have to choose between temporarily suspending non-essential activities and sitting idly by” in the face of this vaccine decree, he pleaded, “I will support American workers, every time”.
Departments, but also national parks and a multitude of American organizations would be affected if the threat of these elected officials was carried out. The winter 2018 shutdown, the longest to date, had notably affected the control of baggage at airports, a mess that the vast majority of elected officials do not want before the holidays.
“So stupid”
Anxious to avoid this very unpopular situation among Americans, parliamentary officials from both camps are calling on the dissenters to change their minds as a matter of urgency.
“It’s so stupid that people opposed to science, to vaccination, say they are going to block the federal state because of that”, lambasted the Democratic President of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.
Despite these negotiations, Joe Biden was confident Thursday afternoon.
“There is a strategy in place” to avoid a “shutdown” he said during a trip, “unless someone decides to behave completely insane”.
It is certainly very common for very last minute deals to be found on temporary budgets. But the situation was uncertain enough that several economists began to quantify the price of this possible blockage, valuing it at a few billion dollars per week.
Debt, army, maternal
The urgency is twofold, because parliamentarians must in parallel tackle before the holidays to a set of specifications that are just as crucial.
In addition to this finance law, elected officials are expected to adopt a separate defense budget.
Even more urgent, they have until December 15 to raise the debt capacity of the United States in order to avoid the first sovereign default of the world’s largest economic power.
Otherwise America could find itself strapped for cash and unable to meet its payments, a potentially catastrophic situation that major powers around the world are watching closely.
If Congress manages to get rid of these sites in time, it will finally be able to debate the gigantic component of social and ecological investments wanted by Joe Biden, which the White House is impatiently awaiting.
This $ 1,750 billion project, which includes free kindergarten for all and generous funding to reduce American greenhouse gas emissions, has been stuck for months in the limbo of the American Parliament.
But Joe Biden is desperately counting on these measures, very popular with Americans according to the polls, to revive his presidency.
The leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate has pledged that this text be adopted before Christmas. This scenario, like so many others in Congress, remains very uncertain for the time being.