by David Morgan, Richard Cowan and Makini Brice
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House of Representatives, where the Republicans are in the majority, adopted on Friday the proposed US state budget for 2024, a budget of 1,200 billion dollars (1,110 billion euros), thanks to the support from the Democrats, provoking the fury of the conservative camp which threatens the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, with ouster.
The text was passed by 286 votes to 134 votes, it had to be approved by the American Senate with a Democratic majority – for a final vote by Congress – in order to avoid a “shutdown”, that is to say the paralysis of the federal finances.
The Senate has until 04:00 GMT to validate the text before the closure of the departments of Homeland Security, the Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service and the State Department.
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The crisis relating to the federal state budget has lasted for more than six months.
Rating agencies have stressed that lengthy negotiations could harm the solvency of the federal government, which has a debt of 34.6 trillion dollars (32,000 billion euros).
During the vote, 185 Democrats and 101 Republicans voted in favor of the text, pushing Republican MP Marjorie Taylor Greene to introduce a measure to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Mike Johnson succeeded Kevin McCarthy, who was removed last October from the post of Speaker of the House of Representatives for the first time in American history, just days after an agreement was reached at the last minute to avoid the partial shutdown of the House of Representatives. federal administrations.
Taylor Greene, however, clarified that she would not campaign for an immediate vote.
“I filed a motion today. But it is more of a warning than a letter of dismissal,” the Republican representative from Georgia told the press.
The leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, for his part called on his colleagues to act quickly to validate the budget text.
“Let’s finish the job today. Let’s avoid even one week of shutdown. Let’s finish the job to free up government funds for the rest of the upcoming fiscal year,” he said.
The last partial government shutdown dates from Donald Trump’s mandate and lasted from December 22, 2018 to January 25, 2019.
The Republicans then failed to reach an agreement with the Democrats to finance a wall between the American and Mexican border.
The text voted on Friday by the House of Representatives concerns, among other things, the financing of the army, internal security and the health system.
(French version Zhifan Liu, edited by Sophie Louet)
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