The Senate of USA approved this Saturday, with the support of Republicans and Democrats, the extension of the federal budget that keeps the Government open and that it arrived outside the initial deadline of 00:01 local time on Saturday.
The House of Representatives had validated the budget extension this Friday with 366 votes in favor and 34 against and the approval of the Senate by 85 votes in favor and 11 against occurred about 40 minutes after midnight. After receiving the endorsement of the Upper House, the text was sent to the White House so that the president, Joe Biden, could promulgate it with his signature.
The White House had actually announced, already after midnight, that was not going to apply the preparations for the partial closure of the Executive due to the high degree of confidence that Congress was going to imminently approve the relevant appropriations.
A shutdown of the federal administration could have left hundreds of thousands of public workers without salaries and the country’s main agencies operating under minimal services.
The extension of the funds, which provides the Government with financing until March 14 of next year, is the second that was put to a vote in the Lower House after the president-elect, Donald Trumpwill torpedo an agreement on Wednesday that the Republicans and Democrats in Congress had already closed. Trump and his right-hand man Elon Musk forced Republican congressmen to break with the pact and put to a vote a unilateral proposal that included demands such as the elimination of the debt ceiling, which sets a limit on government borrowing. That proposal sank in the Lower House due to opposition from Democrats and some Republicans.
After a strong debate within the party, the president of that chamber, Republican Mike Johnson, presented a similar text on Friday that excluded the debt ceiling and that was not negotiated with the Democrats either, but they voted in favor to avoid the closure. of Government. The proposal extends the federal budget until March 14, 2025, when Trump will already be in power (the inauguration is January 20) and includes $100 billion for natural disaster prevention and $10 billion for support for farmers.
Although Trump did not achieve his goal of eliminating the debt ceiling, the topic is likely to be broached again when funds run out in March. By then, the new legislature will have started with the Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress.
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 them only 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.
