The US Senate on Thursday passed the federal budget bill, a text that provides $ 45 billion in aid to Ukraine and must still be voted on by the House of Representatives in the coming hours.
This legislative version of 1700 billion dollars should be adopted without major jolts in the lower house in order to avoid a paralysis of the State (the famous "shutdown"), which could intervene Friday evening if no text were adopted by the Congress.
“This text absolutely must pass because it will benefit families, veterans, our national security and even the health of our democratic institutions
,” said Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer before the vote.
Twenty Republican votes
The project indeed amends a law dating from the 19th century in order to stipulate that the American vice-president cannot intervene directly in the certification of the electoral results.
Donald Trump had used the ambiguities of the old text to suggest that Mike Pence, his vice-president, could have stopped Joe Biden's coming to power after a victory that the incumbent Republican did not want to recognize - one of the elements which led to the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Donald Trump, a new candidate for 2024, on Thursday called the text an
“abomination”
,
“sold”
to the
“far left”
, to the elites of the capital and to lobbies.
This budget must finance the functioning of the American federal state - law enforcement, diplomacy, armed forces, economic policy, etc.
- until September 2023. With a Democratic majority in the Chamber for a few more days, and the day after a visit by Volodymyr Zelensky warmly welcomed by the vast majority of parliamentarians, the positive outcome of the passage of the text does little of doubts.
Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the Republicans in the House, called on the elected officials of his camp to vote against the bill in order to postpone the vote and benefit from greater leeway when the holidays return, when the new Republican majority in the House, resulting from the midterm elections, will take office.
But Republican senators largely ignored it, giving nearly 20 votes to Democrats to pass the text Thursday afternoon, 68 votes to 29. On Wednesday evening, a disagreement on immigration had pushed back a few hours adoption of the text - a subject finally removed from the vote so as not to block its rapid passage.