Republicans seek to cause federal services to protest against the government’s vaccine bonds.
Le Monde with AFP
The American Congress overcameped, Thursday, December 2, a first obstacle to escape a paralysis of US federal services this weekend, the famous shutdown that representatives Republicans seek to provoke to protest against the government’s immunization obligations. biden .
The elected representatives of the House of Representatives approved a new Finance Law in the afternoon to try to avoid a sudden dewatering of the Federal State resources Friday at midnight, which would force hundreds of thousands of Employees with technical unemployment.
But this text, fruit of long negotiations, must now go through the stage of the Senate where a single defection could prevent it from adopting it in time, the agreement of all elected officials being necessary to vote.
Gold A handful of Republicans, most very close to Donald Trump, refuse this for the moment, arguing that the text would help to finance Joe Biden’s decree who forces companies of companies with more than 100 people to do vaccinate, and to which they oppose. One of them, Senator Mike Lee of the Utah’s very conservative state, defended his decision on Thursday. “If it is necessary to choose between temporarily suspending non-essential activities and remaining arms” in the face of this vaccinal decree, “he argued,” I will support American workers, each time “.
Ministries but also national parks and a multitude of US organizations would be affected if the threat of these elected officials was implemented. The winter 2018 shutdown, the longest dated, had affected luggage control at airports, a mess whose vast majority of Congress elected officials do not want before the holidays.
“So stupid”
Anxious to avoid this very unpopular situation in Americans, the parliamentary officials of both camps call for refractories to be excited. “It is so stupid that people opposed to science, vaccination, say they will block the federal state because of that,” lash the Chamber of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.
Despite these tractings, Joe Biden was confident Thursday afternoon. “There is a strategy in place” To avoid a Shutdown has affirmed when moving, “unless someone decides to have a completely foolish behavior.”
It is certainly very common that last-minute agreements are found on temporary budgets. But the situation was pretty uncertain so that several economists start to quantify the price of this potential blockage, evaluating them at a few billion dollars a week.
debt, army, maternal
The emergency is twofold because parliamentarians must in parallel to tackle before the holidays at a specific specifications. In addition to this finance law, elected officials are supposed to adopt a separate defense budget.
More urgent, they have until December 15 to raise the debt capacity of the United States to avoid the first sovereign fault of the greatest global economic power. Otherwise America could be short of money and unable to honor its payments, a potentially catastrophic situation that the great powers around the world monitor closely.
If the Congress manages to get rid of these projects on time, it can finally debate the gigantic component of social and ecological investment desired by Joe Biden, which the White House awaits impatience. This $ 1,750 billion project, which provides for free kindergarten for all and rich funding to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions, is blocked for months in the limbo of the American Parliament.
Gold Joe Biden desperately counts on these measures, very popular with the Americans according to the surveys, to revive his presidency. The leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate has committed that this text be adopted before Christmas. This scenario, like so many others in Congress, remains very uncertainly.