(Washington) New refined text? With the Democrats? With an increase in the debt ceiling? The American Congress is forced to start from scratch on Thursday to avoid a paralysis of the State before Friday evening, after the spectacular rejection of a budget agreement by Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
Posted at 10:15 a.m.
Robin LEGRAND
Agence France-Presse
The twist took elected officials by surprise and gave a glimpse of a Trump 2.0 presidency even before the Republican took office on January 20. With a style – similar to his first mandate – not bothering with conventions, even if it means causing a certain chaos.
“Kill the text!” »: in a long series of publications on Wednesday on his social network X, Elon Musk initially loudly expressed his opposition to this budget agreement. Negotiated between elected Republicans and Democrats in Congress, it would have made it possible to finance the federal state until mid-March and avoid the famous “shutdown”.
In the evening, the richest man in the world – appointed by Donald Trump to head a commission to slash public spending – was joined in this regard by the future American president, who said he was delighted with the fact that this “ridiculous and extraordinarily expensive” bill is “rapidly dying.”
Uncertainty
Their respective positions mean that this agreement of more than 1,500 pages will certainly never be adopted, while time is running out before the deadline of Friday evening 11:59 p.m. to avoid a “shutdown”.
A paralysis of federal public services would lead to technical unemployment for hundreds of thousands of civil servants, the freezing of several social benefits or even the closure of certain daycare centers.
An extremely unpopular situation, especially as Christmas approaches.
The White House denounced the risk of “instability” and “harming hard-working Americans” posed by Republicans.
Some elected officials also denounced the influence of the richest man in the world in this turnaround.
“Donald Trump and elected Republican officials have bowed their heads to the real president-elect, Elon Musk,” criticized Democrat Nydia Velazquez.
Uncertainty now dominates over the course of action.
For some Trumpist elected officials, a new bill providing for much less spending should be quickly presented to Congress.
These supporters of a slimming treatment of the federal State would remove from the negotiated agreement the 100 billion in aid to American regions recently affected by natural disasters, or even the 10 billion in aid to farmers.
“We should adopt a refined spending text that does not give […] to the Democrats whatever they want,” argued Donald Trump on Wednesday.
« Guillotine »
But the president-elect also set his conditions: no budgetary text should be adopted without being 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 upon his return to power he wanted to avoid this “guillotine”, “a vicious trap” set up according to him last year by the Democrats.
Without an increase or a new suspension of the ceiling, “I will fight to the end,” wrote Donald Trump, saying he wanted everything to be resolved before January 20.
If elected Democratic officials certainly want to avoid any “shutdown”, it is not certain that they are ready to make this concession to the future president. Thus adding a new level of uncertainty about the possibility of an agreement being reached quickly.
