The United States has stopped the Government shutdown ‘in extremis’ in the first hour of this Saturday thanks to the extension of the federal budget approved by Congress with the support of Republicans and Democrats after two days of uncertainty generated by Donald Trump.
The Senate, with a Democratic majority, has endorsed the initiative with 85 votes in favor and 11 against, after the House of Representatives, under Republican control, did the same with 366 ‘yeses’ and 34 ‘noes’.
Although the approval of the Upper House has arrived about 40 minutes after midnight, the deadline to extend the budget, the White House had not managed to implement the closing protocol because it took the favorable vote for granted.
The extension provides the federal Administration with new funds until March 14 of next year, when the country will already be governed by Trump, who will succeed Joe Biden on January 20.
The approved text does not include the demand that the president-elect had made this week to eliminate the debt ceiling, which limits the Government’s public borrowing capacity.
With the provision of new funds, a closure that could have left hundreds of thousands of workers without salaries, agencies operating under minimum services and the closure of museums and national parks is stopped.
The closure of the Administration on Christmas Eve and a few weeks before a presidential inauguration was a very feasible possibility since Trump and his right-hand man, Elon Musk, dynamited on Wednesday an agreement that the Republicans and Democrats in Congress had already closed to continue financing to the Government.
Both Trump and Musk, who is in charge of cutting public spending in the next Administration, showed their strong influence within the Republican ranks by achieving, through tweets and calls, that Republican legislators broke that pact.
Support of three quarters of the House
The president of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson, who is risking remaining in office for the next legislature that will begin in January, was forced on Thursday to put to a vote a proposal not agreed upon with the Democrats that included the demands of the elected president.
But the text needed the support of three-quarters of the House and failed due to rejection by Democrats and some Republicans, especially over the debt ceiling.
The Republican Party has traditionally opposed increasing public debt, but the president-elect anticipates that he will need to borrow to carry out his government plans.
After an intense internal debate, the Republicans voted this Friday on another text that excludes the elimination of the debt ceiling and that was also not negotiated with the Democrats, but they voted in favor to avoid the imminent government shutdown.
The leader of the Democratic minority in the Lower House, Hakeem Jeffries, claimed that his party prevented with its vote “radical Republicans from closing the Government and collapsing the economy.”
The proposal approved by both chambers extends the federal budget until March 14, 2025 and includes $100 billion for natural disaster prevention and $10 billion to support farmers.
Since 1976, the year in which new budget laws were approved, the US Administration has run out of funds on twenty occasions, although most of the time it has only been for one day.
The longest shutdown, 35 days, occurred during Trump’s first term (2017-2021), just before Christmas 2018, due to disagreements between Democrats and Republicans over funding for the wall that the Republican wanted to raise in the border with Mexico.
The chaos and division of recent days is for some analysts an example of how the relationship between Trump, Musk and Congress will work, whose two chambers will be controlled starting in January by Republicans, from whom the president will demand proof of loyalty.
After the favorable vote this Friday, Mike Johnson assured the press that he maintained contacts with Trump and Musk until the last moment.
Musk, whom Democrats point out as a shadow president due to his influence over Trump, stated on social media that Johnson “did a good job.”
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