New turn in the shutdown drama in the USA: The House of Representatives has voted for a 45-day bridging budget. The Democrats grudgingly supported the Republican bill, which does not contain any aid to Ukraine.
The Republicans have a narrow majority in the Congressional Chamber, but were dependent on votes from the Democrats due to a special rule. Now the Senate must vote on the text. US President Joe Biden’s Democrats have the majority there. With the vote in the House of Representatives for the interim budget, there is a chance that government business can be prevented from coming to a standstill at the last moment.
The term of the budget approved by the US Congress at the end of last year ends on Sunday night. By then, a new federal budget or a transitional budget would have to be decided in order to avert insolvency. A shutdown means millions of government employees will no longer receive a salary. Most recently, the deeply divided Republicans in the House of Representatives had torn each other apart in the dispute over a new budget and in the process exposed the chairman of the chamber, Kevin McCarthy.
The Republican McCarthy surprisingly presented the transition financing that morning and put the Democrats under pressure. They were faced with the question: government standstill or no aid to Ukraine? McCarthy was pushed ahead of himself by the radicals in his faction. If the new interim budget passes the Senate, the dispute over a federal budget will begin again in a few weeks.
