The US House of Representatives approved a bipartisan deal to avoid a short-term public administration shutdown, one day before the deadline to extend state funding.
The project, which still needs Senate approval, received 320 votes in favor and 99 votes against.
Nearly half of the Republican members of Congress – 97 out of 210 – voted against the draft budget agreed upon between their leaders and the ruling Democratic Party.
The current resources are funding some federal agencies until Friday and others until next March 8, as the project was approved today, extending the first date until March 8 and the second until the 22nd of the same month.
This is the fourth of successive funding extensions approved by Congress since the beginning of the current fiscal year, on October 1, 2023.
Almost all of them are approved until resources are exhausted, which may cause an administrative shutdown (“shutdown”).
The Senate intends to vote on the project between tonight and Friday.
In parallel with the approval of this government financing agreement, the two parties are negotiating budgets for the fiscal year 2024, which has already passed five months and continues until September 30.
The White House plans to issue its requests for the fiscal year 2025 budget on March 11, while Congress has not even approved this year's budget.
Every time there is less than a week left before the “shutdown,” the White House activates a protocol to prepare all its departments.
A government shutdown means sending hundreds of thousands of public sector employees home without work or pay and closing a large number of services.
The last strike of this kind occurred during the presidency of Republican Donald Trump (2017-2021), and it was, over a period of 35 days (from December 22, 2018 to January 29, 2019), the longest in history during the Christmas holiday.
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