(Washington) The United States entered on Wednesday in the period of budgetary paralysis, the “Shutdown”, with the consequence of the frost of a part of the federal administration, without any solution in the immediate view to the Congress between the Republicans of Donald Trump and the democratic opposition.
Several hundred thousand civil servants will be unemployed and high disruptions are expected for public services users. A very unpopular situation in the United States, unprecedented for seven years, and the two camps of which are already rejecting responsibility.
Democrats “want to close everything, we don’t want to,” said Donald Trump on Tuesday afternoon, before adopting a barely veiled tone.
The White House website has published on its account X The message indicating that “the Democrats have closed the state services”, with a clock which counts the duration of the “Shutdown”.
“Many good things can come out of” Shutdowns “, we can get rid of many things we do not want, and they would be democratic things,” said the American president.
An allusion to him to take advantage of the freezing of certain administrations to accentuate the dismissal of thousands of federal officials, already started with the commission with government efficiency (DOGE) of his ex-allié Elon Musk.
On the NASA website, a message indicates that the federal agency “is currently closed due to an interruption in government funding”.
Several American embassies have announced on X that the information would not be updated except with regard to urgent security announcements.
Each camp accuses the other part of being responsible for the budget blocking.
The two main democrats at the Congress, the head of the minority in the Senate Chuck Schumer and his counterpart in the Hakeem Jeffries Chamber said in a joint statement that “Donald Trump and the Republicans closed state services because they do not want to protect health care of the American people”.
Photo Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, Agency France-Presse
Chuck Schumer, head of the Democrat minority in the Senate
“Democrats are ready to find a bipartisan path to reopen the state services in a way that reduces (health) costs and responds to the crisis generated by the Republicans,” write the two Democratic officials. “But we need a credible partner,” they said.
“Ordered closure”
Donald Trump is no stranger to the “Shutdowns” since the last dates back to his first mandate, when the paralysis had spread from December 2018 to January 2019, for a 35 -day record.
“It is not known how long the Democrats will maintain their untenable posture, making the duration of a” Shutdown “complicated to predict,” said the Budget Office Director at the White House, Russell Vought, in a letter to the main officials of ministerial services.
After the failure of a final vote in the Senate in the evening on Tuesday, Mr. Vought gave the instructions to federal administrations to “implement their plans for an ordered closure”.
The Congress’s budget office estimates that around 750,000 civil servants will be unemployed daily. Air traffic could be affected, while the payment of certain social assistance should be strongly disrupted.
The national parks will also be deprived of the “rangers” responsible for ensuring its maintenance, while the season of the change in color of the trees of trees, an annual event which attracts millions of tourists in the United States.
Record at Wall Street
According to calculations by analysts from the Nationwide insurance company, each week of paralysis could reduce the annual growth of American GDP by 0.2 points.
The global scholarships have not, however, showed an anxiety when approaching the deadline, the Dow Jones index even reached a new record at the fence on Tuesday in Wall Street.
The Republicans are in the majority in the two chambers of the congress, but the Senate regulations make that a budgetary text must be adopted in 60 votes out of 100, therefore requiring at least seven democratic votes.
For the moment, the Republicans offer an extension of the current budget until the end of November and note that no other proposal is on the table. On the other hand, Democrats want to restore hundreds of billions of dollars in health spending – especially in the “Obamacare” health insurance program for households in the working classes – abolished by the Trump administration.
In March, when the threat of a “Shutdown” already hovered, the Republicans had refused to initiate dialogue on the huge budget cuts decided by the Trump administration. Ten Democratic senators, including Chuck Schumer, had contactedly voted for the text of the Republicans, in order to avoid federal paralysis.
Their choice had provoked lively eddies in the Democratic camp, many activists and sympathizers accusing them of folding against Donald Trump and his program deemed radical.
