Trump opposes deal to avert looming budget shutdown

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

The Republican, who will return to the White House on January 20, rejoiced in a publication on his platform Truth Social that this bill ridiculous and extraordinarily expensive either in the process of die quickly.

In a joint statement with his future vice-president JD Vance, he also asserted that any concessions to Democrats represented a betrayal of our country and that the Republicans should not allow themselves to be intimidated by the threat of this paralysis of the State, the famous shutdown.

Before that, the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, had already attacked the agreement in a long series of publications on Wednesday on his social network X.

Kill the text!wrote on several occasions the billionaire who campaigned alongside Donald Trump and was appointed by the latter to head a commission to slash public spending.

Any elected official in the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending plan deserves to lose their election in two years.

A Christmas present to the left

For the Biden administration, a lack of budget agreement risks harm hardworking Americans and of create instability.

Republicans should stop playing political gamesdenounced White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre in a press release.

The Republican President of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, presented this budget agreement of more than 1,500 pages on Tuesday. Negotiated with the Democrats, it included, among other things, more than $100 billion in aid against natural disasters requested by Joe Biden.

The text made it possible to finance the federal state until mid-March and thus avoid the shutdown before the fateful hour of midnight on the night of Friday to Saturday.

Without this, the United States would experience a paralysis of federal public services, resulting in technical unemployment for hundreds of thousands of civil servants, the freezing of several social benefits and even the closure of certain daycare centers.

An extremely unpopular situation, especially as Christmas approaches.

As soon as the agreement negotiated in Congress was published, Trumpist elected officials – supporters of a slimming down of the federal state – protested at what they considered to be irrational spending.

This bill represents a Christmas present to the leftlaunched elected official Russell Fry.

The real president-elect, Elon Musk

The leader of the Democrats in the lower house, Hakeem Jeffries, declared that with this opposition from Donald Trump, the Republican elected officials had ordered to paralyze the state and of make the American workers they claim to support suffer.

Other Democrats denounced Elon Musk’s influence on the president-elect’s decision.

Tonight, Donald Trump and elected Republican officials bowed their heads to the real president-elect, Elon Musk.

The next steps to avoid a shutdown are now uncertain.

For some Trumpist elected officials, a new bill providing for much less spending should be quickly presented to Congress, a solution to which the president-elect adheres, but not unconditionally.

Guillotine

On Truth SocialDonald Trump assured that such a text would be of no use if it was not accompanied by an increase in the debt ceiling.

The United States has the particularity of regularly coming up against a legal constraint concerning its credit capacity: this debt ceiling, or their maximum amount of debt, which must be formally raised or suspended by Congress.

A suspension decided in 2023 expires at the beginning of January and the United States should reach the ceiling in June. Donald Trump therefore declared on Wednesday that he wanted to avoid this guillotine, a vicious trap put in place according to him last year by the Democrats.

Without raising or resuspending the ceiling, I will fight until the endwrote Donald Trump, saying he wanted everything to be resolved before January 20.

US defense budget passed in Congress

Separately, the US Senate passed the annual US defense budget on Wednesday despite some controversial provisions, including one that prohibits reimbursement for transitional care for transgender children of soldiers.

The text, already adopted in the House of Representatives, must now be promulgated by President Joe Biden.

Up 1% compared to last year, the budget of 884 billion dollars approved for the year 2025 notably includes an increase of 14.5% in the pay of the youngest soldiers, and of 4.5% for the rest of the Pentagon’s troops and employees.

Negotiations in Congress had been complicated by the last-minute addition of a provision by the Republican camp that prohibits the military’s health insurance from covering transitional care for transgender minors if they make them sterile.

Tax dollars should not support procedures and treatments that could permanently harm young people and render them infertile.

Diktat of right-thinking, according to the Republicans

In the United States, the rights of transgender people – notably their participation in women’s sports competitions and access to transition care before adulthood – are a hot topic and spark acrimonious debates, an illustration of the fractures in American society on these issues. questions in recent years.

Democrats call for protection of rights LGBTQ+when Republicans rebel against what they consider to be a diktat of right-thinking.

Denying care outright to people who need it – simply because of preconceptions against transgender people – is unacceptableDemocratic elected official Adam Smith launched last week.

He warns that the provision in the budget text could force thousands of soldiers to have to choose between continuing their service under the flags, or leaving to ensure that their child can obtain the necessary care.

The Defense Department’s annual budget, usually a bipartisan topic in Congress, has become a controversial issue in recent years. Last year, Republicans added measures restricting abortion assistance for the military, or even banning the flying of the pride flag. LGBTQ+ on military bases.