In the US, Republican and Democratic leaders have reached an agreement to avoid a budget freeze until after the presidential election in November. The Democratic majority leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, and the Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, announced the bipartisan agreement for both chambers of Congress on Sunday (local time) in Washington, which will ensure the funding of the US federal authorities until December 20th should. The House of Representatives is expected to vote on the agreement reached this week.
So far, there has been a threat of a so-called shutdown before the presidential election on November 5th, as the financing of state institutions under the responsibility of the federal government is currently only secured until the end of September. On Wednesday last week, a majority of parliamentarians in both the House of Representatives and the Senate rejected a bridging budget called for by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and set for the period until the end of March.
Unlike the rejected proposal, the agreement now reached no longer contains a regulation that requires citizens to provide proof of their citizenship when registering for nationwide elections. In his online network Truth Social, Trump called on Republicans not to agree to a proposal without this regulation.
The government under US President Joe Biden, for its part, opposed this because it feared that eligible voters would be deterred from voting. She argued that it was already illegal to vote as a non-citizen and that there was no evidence that they would participate in elections.
The new bill contains $231 million (around 207 million euros) in additional funding for the Secret Service, which is responsible for protecting current and former presidents – and which came under criticism because of the two assassination attempts against Republican presidential candidate Trump. In addition, an additional $47 million will be earmarked for the inauguration of the next US president next January.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Schumer said of the agreement that he was pleased that the bipartisan negotiations had “quickly led to a government financing agreement without cuts (…).” From Schumer’s perspective, the agreement “could have been made two weeks ago.” In a letter to his party colleagues, Republican House Chairman Johnson described the agreement as a “stripped-down” bridging budget that contained “only the absolutely necessary extensions.” This is the “most prudent path forward.”
In the event of a shutdown, millions of state employees would be sent on unpaid compulsory leave. This would mean restrictions on government services and numerous public facilities such as national parks and state museums – just weeks before the US presidential election on November 5th.
