Barely 24 hours after it was passed by the United States Lower House, the Senate approved the provisional government financing project on Wednesday night, thus thwarting the threat of the deadline of the 17th for a possible administrative closure.
The text will immediately go to President Joe Biden's signature. The patch means extending this financing until February and postponing the war that broke out between the Republicans in the Lower House, where many more Democrats than conservatives came to the rescue of the project prepared by conservative speaker Mike Johnson.
The Senate approved this regulation with broad bipartisan support of 87 votes to 11. “Thanks to that bipartisan cooperation, we will keep the government open without any poison pills or painful cuts to citizens or vital programs,” said Chuck Schumer, head of the Democratic majority in the Senate.
“If the speaker is able to work with Democrats and resist the siren song of the hard right in the House of Representatives, then we will avoid administrative shutdowns in the future and finish the job of funding the government,” Schumer insisted.
This project conceived by Johnson, and despised by his most extreme colleagues, has the originality that it bifurcates its expiration between January 19 for the Department of Defense and February 2 for the rest of the executive. It has caused repulsion among the ultra conservatives, since it maintains social spending without eliminating items, but they have given the new president of the Chamber a margin.
Another thing will be if, when this initiative expires, it once again proposes a short-term project and seeks Democratic support. It is not ruled out that rookie Johnson suffers the same fate that his predecessor Kevin McCarthy suffered a month and a half ago, when eight ultras from his party forced his resignation over a project similar to the one now approved.
