The House of Representatives in Washington on Wednesday rejected a six-month extension of the US government’s budget, risking a federal paralysis before the November elections, amid dissent within the Republican Party.
Congress must adopt the 2025 budget by the end of September (the end of the fiscal year) for all services to continue to be funded. Otherwise, there would be a “shutdown”: millions of civil servants on technical unemployment, some food aid suspended, air traffic interrupted, among other things.
House members-elect voted 220 to 202 to oppose a temporary extension of the budget until March 2025, after the candidate chosen in the November 5 presidential election takes office. More than a dozen Republicans joined Democrats in opposing their party’s extension proposal, depriving the latter of their narrow majority in the House.
Another piece of legislation, the “SAVE Act,” was added to the proposal under pressure from Donald Trump. It required voters to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections.
Before Wednesday’s vote, Trump said on his Truth Social network that “If Republicans didn’t get the SAVE Act in its entirety, they shouldn’t accept it” the budget expansion. He had already threatened to trigger a shutdown if this measure was not adopted. The Biden administration opposes this, pointing out that voting by non-citizens is already illegal and that there is no evidence that undocumented immigrants participate in elections.
At least ten Republicans voted against the proposal last week and the vote was postponed to reach an agreement within the party. The elected Democrat Rosa DeLauro, head of the parliamentary committee specific to the federal budget, denounced in a press release on Wednesday the attitude of the Republicans who “failed in one of his simplest tasks”. “We have seven working days left for the government to continue functioning”he added.
