There will be no paralysis, the famous “shutdown”, of the American federal administration. On Friday, December 23, the US Congress adopted a vast federal services finance bill, totaling 1,700 billion dollars. After the Senate, the text was voted by 225 votes against 201 in the House of Representatives. President Joe Biden has yet to sign the law into law with his signature.
This budget must finance the functioning of the American federal state – law enforcement, diplomacy, armed forces, economic policy, etc. – until September 2023. It also includes new aid of 45 billion for Ukraine. This sum will be added to the 47.82 billion euros announced since the end of January 2022, including 22.9 billion in military aid, making the United States the first donor ahead of the European Union.
Adoption of an election amendment
In addition to financial considerations, the text voted by Congress also introduces an amendment to a law dating from the 19th century in order to mention that the American vice-president cannot intervene directly in the certification of electoral results. Donald Trump had used the ambiguities of the old text to suggest that Mike Pence, his vice-president, could have stopped the coming to power of Joe Biden after a victory that the incumbent Republican did not want to recognize – one of the elements that led to the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the Republicans in the House, had called on the elected officials of his camp to vote against the bill, in order to benefit from greater leeway when the holidays returned, when the new Republican majority in the House , resulting from the mid-term elections, will take office. But Republican senators largely ignored it, giving Democrats nearly 20 votes to pass the text 68 to 29 before the House adopted it.