Risk of budgetary paralysis | Trump speaks out against a deal in Congress

(Washington) 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 at the deadline of Friday evening.

The Republican, who will return to the White House on January 20, rejoiced in a publication on his Truth Social platform that this “ridiculous and extraordinarily expensive” bill was “dying quickly”.

In a joint statement with his future vice-president JD Vance, he also affirmed that any concession to the Democrats represented “a betrayal of our country” and that the Republicans should not 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 posts 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 scandalous spending project deserves to lose their election in two years,” also said the boss of Tesla and SpaceX.

For the Biden administration, a lack of budget agreement risks “harming hard-working Americans” and “creating instability”.

“Republicans should stop playing political games,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

“Christmas present”

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 slimming down the federal state – protested at what they considered to be irrational spending.

This bill represents “a Christmas gift to the left,” said elected official Russell Fry.

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

“Hunted over”

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

“Tonight, Donald Trump and elected Republican officials have bowed their heads to the real president-designate, Elon Musk,” criticized New York elected official Nydia Velazquez.

The next steps to avoid a “shutdown” are now uncertain.

For certain 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.

On Truth Social, Donald 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 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.