The United States avoids a “shutdown” at the last minute, aid to Ukraine on hold

A month and a half of respite. The United States avoided the paralysis of its federal administration at the last minute this Saturday, September 30, with the adoption by the Senate, just three hours before the "shutdown", of an emergency measure allowing its financing to temporarily continue. This emergency provision adopted by Congress provides that the American administration continues to be funded for 45 days. However, it excludes aid to Ukraine at war, requested by the White House.

In a final attempt to avoid the paralysis of the American administration, the resolution proposed at the last minute by the (Republican) President of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, was adopted by the House before being validated by the Senate just three hours away from the “shutdown”, which would have put civil servants on technical unemployment and cut food aid to certain beneficiaries.

Hundreds of thousands of American officials therefore held their breath as the deadline approached (midnight on the night of Saturday to Sunday), because neither chamber of Congress - neither the Senate in the hands of the Democrats, nor the House representatives controlled by the Republicans - had not found agreement on a finance law to extend the federal state budget.

If Kevin McCarthy's measure had not been adopted, the world's largest economy would have slowed down on Sunday: 1.5 million civil servants would have gone without pay and air traffic would have been disrupted, while visitors to national parks would have found the door closed. Saturday's vote is “a victory for the American people, and a total defeat for right-wing extremists,” said the leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries.

Adopted with 335 yes (91 no) in the House, the text was then approved by 88 senators against 9. “This evening, the bipartisan majorities of the House of Representatives and the Senate voted in favor of maintaining the opening of the government, thereby avoiding an unnecessary crisis that would have inflicted unnecessary suffering on millions of hard-working Americans,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.

But he immediately called on Congress to quickly approve aid to Ukraine that was excluded from the emergency funding measure. “I expect the President of Congress to fulfill his commitment to the Ukrainian people and ensure the adoption of the necessary support to help Ukraine at this critical time,” Joe Biden said, referring to Kevin McCarthy.

To discuss aid to Ukraine, lawmakers must now consider a separate bill for $24 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, which Joe Biden wanted to see included in the budget. A vote could take place early next week, according to American media. The White House had initially demanded that the budget law include this $24 billion in aid.

“What Russia did was wrong. But I think whatever we do, we have to define what a victory means and what the plan should be,” Kevin McCarthy told reporters. “I think there is a real frustration across America, which sees this president ignoring the borders of the United States and being more concerned about another place,” he added, referring to this which Republicans call “the migration crisis in the United States”.

A handful of Trumpist Republican elected officials refuse to release any new aid to kyiv, believing that these funds should be allocated to managing the migration crisis. These lieutenants of Donald Trump, who have disproportionate power due to the very small Republican majority in the House, were ordered by the former president, who could face Joe Biden in 2024, to “paralyze » the federal state unless it wins its case on “all” the budgetary issues under debate.

Under the presidency of Donald Trump, the United States experienced its longest “shutdown”, during the winter of 2018/2019. According to several estimates, the country's GDP was then cut by more than 3 billion dollars.