Donald Trump opposes agreement to avoid budgetary paralysis

The president-elect rejected on Wednesday the agreement reached the day before in Congress, believing that the Republicans must not cede anything to the Democrats.

Donald Trump expressed, on Wednesday, December 18, his opposition 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 by the Friday evening deadline. The Republican, who will return to the White House on January 20, rejoiced in a publication on his Truth Social platform 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 said 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 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. For the Biden administration, a lack of budget agreement risks “harming hard-working Americans” and of “create instability”.

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.

As soon as the agreement negotiated in Congress was published, Trumpist elected officials, in favor of slimming down the federal state, rebelled against what they consider to be irrational spending. This bill represents “a Christmas present to the left”launched elected official Russell Fry.

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. 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.