The shutdown was averted at the last moment in the USA: after the US House of Representatives, the Senate also passed an interim budget. President-elect Trump and his advisor Musk had turned the budget dispute into a tremor.
The US Congress averted an impending shutdown of government business at the last moment. After the House of Representatives, the Senate passed an interim budget in a night session shortly after a corresponding deadline, thereby preventing a longer government shutdown.
This ended a day-long dither that President-elect Donald Trump and his confidant, tech billionaire Elon Musk, had triggered with a political blockade maneuver. US President Joe Biden still has to sign the budget law in order to bring it into force – but this is considered a formality and, according to the White House, should happen during the course of Saturday.
The vote in the Senate only began shortly after midnight – just after the deadline by which a budget had to be presented had passed. From a purely technical point of view, this meant that a shutdown mode was activated for a short time. However, this does not have an actual effect due to the minimal duration. The White House said ministries and agencies could continue their normal operations and would not be paralyzed.
Trump and Musk torpedoed previous agreement
Without the budget agreement, this would have happened because the federal government would not have had any fresh money available. As a result, state institutions would have had to partially stop working and many state employees would not receive a salary for the time being – especially around Christmas. Republicans and Democrats in Congress therefore struggled intensively to find a solution.
The last-minute deal followed frantic days in Parliament after Trump, spurred on by Musk, unceremoniously torpedoed a previous budget agreement. Trump forced renegotiations of the budget draft to produce a significantly slimmed-down version. In the end, he was unable to get through with one core demand. The blockade campaign by Trump and Musk was nevertheless a special kind of political maneuver that caused a great stir.
The fight for the Debt ceiling
Among other things, Trump tried to include an issue that was not actually planned for in the budget negotiations and to achieve a suspension of the debt ceiling for several years. The limit determines the maximum amount government debt can rise to finance current expenses such as salaries, social benefits, defense spending and interest on existing debt. If the cap is reached and not increased, the US government will not be allowed to take on any new debt.
The debate over the debt ceiling regularly leads to conflict between Republicans and Democrats because it is often used as a pressure tool for other political goals.
