On Friday, December 23, the American Congress adopted a vast budget bill for federal services, for a total amount of 1,700 billion dollars (1,600 billion euros), including 45 billion dollars for Ukraine. After that of the Senate on Thursday, the vote by 225 votes against 201 of the House of Representatives makes it possible to avoid the paralysis of the American federal administration (the famous shutdown), which could have taken place as early as Friday evening. President Joe Biden has yet to sign the law into law with his signature.
“This bill is good for our economy, our competitiveness and our people – and I will sign it as soon as it hits my desk”he reacted in a press release on Friday. “This bill is an essential piece of legislation, not only to finance the state, to pay our civil servants, but also to show that the American state works”declared before the vote the leader of the elected Democrats in the House, Steny Hoyer.
This budget must finance the functioning of the American federal state – law enforcement, diplomacy, armed forces, economic policy, etc. – until September 2023.
The text also includes an amendment to a law dating from the 19the 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 outgoing president did not want to recognize: one of the elements which led to the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Mr. Trump, a new candidate for 2024, on Thursday called the text a« abomination »imputing it to the” leftmost “to the elites of the capital and to the lobbies.
Rally of about twenty Republicans
With a Democratic majority in the Chamber for a few more days, and two days after a visit by the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, warmly welcomed by the vast majority of parliamentarians, the positive outcome of the passage of the text was hardly in doubt.
Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the Republicans in the House, had however called on the elected representatives 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 Chamber, resulting from the midterm elections, will take office. But Republican senators largely ignored it on Thursday afternoon, giving Democrats nearly 20 votes to pass the text, with 68 votes to 29, before the House adopted it on Friday.
Before the vote, elected Republicans in the House of Representatives took the floor to denounce the lack of time granted to them to study the text, finalized three days ago, and to criticize the presence of provisions qualified as « woke », such as the financing of projects in support of the LGBT+ community. But Mr McCarthy did not renew his performance from last year, when he held the microphone for eight and a half hours to push back the vote, everyone hoping to make it to their families in time for the holidays by avoiding the winter storm that strikes the country.
“We are two days away from Christmas”did he declare. “The holiday season is the season of giving, but, in Congress, it seems to be the season of pocket-filling for Democratic allies and baton-making for hard-working Americans. » Nancy Pelosi, the outgoing Speaker of the House of Representatives, for her part welcomed the funding of“another substantial series of security, economic and humanitarian aid” for Ukraine. “And it’s really not – as the President of Ukraine said the other night – about charity. It’s about safety, it’s about working together”did she say.