a new shutdown narrowly avoided on the back of Ukraine
The American Congress approved an extension of the federal state budget on Wednesday, November 15. The result of rare cooperation between Democrats and Republicans, this agreement prevents the paralysis of the American administration in the run-up to Thanksgiving and the end-of-year holidays. But this compromise was made at the expense of Ukraine, whose military aid was suspended.
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“ We will not abandon Ukraine », keeps insisting American President Joe Biden. But in fact, American financial support for kyiv is indeed called into question by the latest budget agreement. The Democrats wanted a huge package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, but ultimately each military aid will be treated separately, at the request of the Republicans. The latter refused to release 61 billion dollars in favor of kyiv as planned by the Biden administration.
To avoid a painful shutdown which would have deprived more than a million civil servants of salary in the run-up to the holidays, the government had to make significant concessions, particularly on the Ukrainian issue. A short-lived compromise: the budget agreement must in fact be renegotiated at the start of next year.
The hard-line Republicans have already announced that they are strictly opposed to any additional federal spending. Which severely complicates any negotiation for aid for Ukraine. As for financial support for Israel, in the midst of the war against Hamas, the Democrats will try to negotiate an agreement in the coming weeks.
The shutdown, a financial impasse that recurs regularly
The dissensions in Congress – between Republicans in the majority in the House and Democrats, in control in the Senate – are such that elected officials are unable to vote on one-year budgets, unlike what is done elsewhere, in other countries.
The United States is therefore content with a series of mini-budgets lasting one or two months. Each time one of these budgets expires, everything has to be done again: negotiations, threats, agreements, then a series of votes, in the House, in the Senate.
Gn Fr world
