(Washington) Will an agreement be reached three days before paralysis? The American Congress votes Tuesday on an extension of the federal state budget, in order to avoid, once again, the risk of a deadlock with devastating consequences.
Two months after having narrowly avoided shutting down part of the country, the world’s leading economic power once again finds itself on the edge of the precipice.
The federal state budget expires at midnight on the night of Friday to Saturday.
If nothing is done to extend it by this date, the country will suddenly slow down: 1.5 million civil servants will be deprived of salaries, air traffic will be disrupted, while visitors to national parks will find their doors closed.
Most elected officials from both camps do not want this situation which is extremely unpopular, the famous “shutdown”, especially as the Thanksgiving holidays approach.
Dissensions
A vote is organized in the House of Representatives at the end of the afternoon on a small extension of this budget. If it passes, it will then be up to the Senate to approve it in time.
The dissensions in Congress are such that elected officials are currently unable to vote on one-year budgets, contrary to what most economies in the world do.
Instead, the United States must settle for a series of one- or two-month mini-budgets.
Acrimonious negotiations, commented on extensively on social networks, threats, then a series of votes, in the House, in the Senate… Each time one of these budgets expires, everything has to be redone.
It is certainly very common for last minute agreements to be reached on these finance laws.
But the latest negotiations around the American federal budget, at the end of September, plunged Congress into chaos.
Trumpist elected officials, furious that the Republican Speaker of the House at the time had reached a last-minute agreement with the Democratic camp, dismissed him – an absolutely unprecedented situation.
Debt crisis in June
This time, the agreement on the table proposes to extend the budget at two different deadlines: one part until mid-January, the other until the beginning of February.
The new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, unknown to the general public and with very limited experience within the Republican staff, is still trying to find his feet.
He is in any case forced to deal, like his predecessor, with a handful of Trumpists, supporters of a very strict budgetary orthodoxy, and the Democrats, who refuse to have the country’s economic policy dictated to them by lieutenants of the former president.
These are the same conservative elected officials who pushed the United States to the brink four months ago.
The world’s leading power then avoided a payment default at the last minute following long negotiations between the Biden administration and the conservatives.