United States: Congress overcomes first obstacle to avoid “shutdown” – Franceinfo

The “shutdown” can still be avoided. The American Congress overcame Thursday, December 2 a first obstacle to escape a paralysis of the American federal services this weekend. The elected representatives of the House of Representatives approved a new finance law in an attempt to avoid a sudden drying up of the resources of the federal state on Friday at midnight, which would force hundreds of thousands of employees on technical unemployment.

This text, the result of long negotiations, must now go through the Senate stage where a single defection could prevent it from being adopted in time, the agreement of all elected officials being necessary to vote. A handful of Republicans, most of them very close to Donald Trump, are resistant to it. According to them, the text would help finance Joe Biden’s decree which requires employees of companies with more than 100 people to be vaccinated. An extent to which they are strongly opposed. “Whether to choose between temporarily suspending non-essential activities and sitting idly by” in the face of this vaccination decree, “I will support American workers, every time”, justified Senator Mike Lee of the very conservative state of Utah.

Ministries but also national parks and a multitude of American organizations would be affected if the threat of these elected officials was carried out. The winter 2018 shutdown, the longest to date, had notably affected the control of baggage in airports, a mess that the vast majority of elected officials do not want before the holidays.

Anxious to avoid this very unpopular situation among Americans, parliamentary officials from both camps are calling on the dissenters to change their minds as a matter of urgency. “It’s so stupid that people opposed to science, to vaccination, say they will block the federal state because of it“, lambasted the Democratic President of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. Joe Biden, he is confident: “There is a strategy in place” to avoid a “shutdown”, “unless someone decides to behave completely foolishly”.