United States: Trump speaks out against a budget agreement in Congress

Donald Trump expressed his opposition on Wednesday to a budget agreement negotiated in the American Congress between Republican and Democratic elected officials, thus further raising the specter of a paralysis of the federal state at the deadline of midnight Friday evening.

The president-elect and his future vice-president JD Vance spoke out in a joint statement against the text, saying that any concession to Democrats represented “a betrayal of our country” and that Republicans should not be intimidated by the threat of this paralysis of the State, the famous “shutdown”.

“We should adopt a refined spending text that does not give […] to the Democrats whatever they want,” argued the two future leaders, who will take office on January 20.

Avoid “shutdown” before Friday evening midnight

The Republican President of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, presented on Tuesday this budget agreement of more than 1,500 pages, negotiated with the Democrats, which notably included more than 100 billion dollars (90 billion Swiss francs) in aid against natural disasters requested by Joe Biden, as well as 10 billion dollars (9 billion Swiss francs) in aid to American farmers, but also an increase in the salaries of elected representatives of Congress.

The text would make it possible to finance the federal state until mid-March and thus avoid the “shutdown” before the fateful hour of Friday evening midnight.

Without this, the United States would therefore experience a paralysis of federal public services, with the result being technical unemployment for hundreds of thousands of civil servants, the freezing of several social benefits, or even the closure of certain daycare centers. A situation which is therefore extremely unpopular, especially as Christmas approaches.

“Kill the text!”

But as soon as the agreement negotiated in Congress was published, Trumpist elected officials – supporters of slimming down the federal state – rebelled against what they consider to be irrational spending.

This is for example the case of Elon Musk, ally of Donald Trump and appointed by the latter to head a commission to slash public spending, who attacked the text in a long series of posts on Wednesday on his network social

“Kill the text!”, wrote the richest man in the world on several occasions. “Any elected official in the House or Senate who votes for this scandalous spending project deserves to lose their election in two years,” also said the boss of Tesla and SpaceX.

“Latest news”

Want to stay on top of the news? “Tribune de Genève” offers you two meetings per day, directly in your email box. So you don’t miss anything that’s happening in your canton, in Switzerland or around the world.

Other newsletters

Log in

Did you find an error? Please report it to us.

0 comments