Federal Senate approved bill to avoid government shutdown; extension waits for Biden's signature

Washington – The United States Upper House gave its final yes to the one-week budget extension agreed upon between Republicans and Democrats, hours before part of the funds available to finance the Government expired on March 1.

By 77 votes in favor and 13 against, the US Senate finally approved the bill, and all that is missing is the signature of the president, Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it in the next few hours.

“What we have done today has been to overcome the opposition of the extreme right,” said the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Charles Schumer, just before the vote. The government shutdown has been avoided, “without capitulating to the extremists,” he added.

The vote in the Senate took place a few hours after the House of Representatives did the same and said yes to the bill, which received 320 votes in favor and 99 against.

Almost half of the Republican congressmen who voted – 97 out of 210 – did so against the budget project agreed upon between their leaders and the Democratic ruling party.

The current funds finance some federal agencies until March 1 and others until the 8th, while the approved project extends the first date until March 8 and the second until the 22nd.

Congress has been approving successive budget extensions – this is the fourth – since the current fiscal year began, on October 1, 2023, now five months ago.

Almost all of them have been approved to the limit that resources are exhausted, which would cause an administrative closure or “shutdown.”

In parallel with the approval of the extensions, the two parties are negotiating the budgets for fiscal year 2024, which has already passed five months and runs until September 30.

In fact, the White House is scheduled to make public its requests for the fiscal year 2025 budget on March 11, when Congress has not even approved the 2024 budget.

Every time an administrative closure is less than a week away, the White House activates a protocol to prepare all its departments.

A government shutdown would mean sending hundreds of thousands of public employees home without work or pay and the paralysis of a multitude of services.

The last closure of this type occurred during the Presidency of Republican Donald Trump (2017-2021) and was, with 35 days (from December 22, 2018 to January 29, 2019), the longest in history during the Christmas holidays. .

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