Twenty days after the start of the budgetary paralysis in the United States, its effects are extending to ever more sectors of the federal state and even affecting the country’s nuclear deterrent on Monday.
The national nuclear security agency, the NNSA, must furlough some 1,400 federal officials, while fewer than 400 will remain on the job to ensure the maintenance of American nuclear warheads during this “shutdown,” Ben Dietderich, spokesperson for the Department of Energy, told CNN on Friday.
Republican MP Mike Rogers, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, said the same day he had been informed that the NNSA was “on the verge of exhausting the relief funds it was using.”
“It will have to fire 80% of its employees,” said the elected official, then specifying that they would be placed on technical unemployment, but not sacked.
“These are not employees you want to see go home. They look after a very important strategic asset for us. They must be at work and they must be paid,” he insisted.
According to two sources within the NNSA cited by CNN, however, no immediate threat to national security is to be feared at the moment.
” Hazard “
Since 1er October and the expiration of the United States budget, Donald Trump’s Republicans and the Democratic opposition cannot agree on how to exit the “shutdown”.
Asked at a press conference about the nuclear issue, House Republican Leader Mike Johnson said Monday that “every day that the state is paralyzed is a danger to the American people.”
PHOTO AL DRAGO, REUTERS
House Republican Leader Mike Johnson
“America is the last superpower on the planet, but we must maintain that status. And if we fall behind in terms of funding or personnel (…), it is very serious,” he added.
According to estimates from the Bipartisan Policy Center, more than 700,000 federal civil servants are already unemployed without pay. Nearly 700,000 others continue to work without pay until the blockade ends.
On the other hand, Donald Trump had pledged that the more than 1.3 million American military personnel would receive their October 15 pay normally.
With no end in sight, the current blockage is already the third longest in the country’s history and is slowly but surely approaching the record of 35 days, established in 2019, already under Donald Trump.
“Big mistake”
Republicans are proposing to extend the current budget, with the same spending levels, while Democrats are calling for an extension of subsidies for health insurance programs for low-income households.
Due to the rules in force in the Senate, even if the Republicans have a majority, several Democratic votes are necessary to adopt a budget.
But Donald Trump rejects any negotiation on health issues without first “reopening” the federal state.
To try to get opposition senators to give in, the president increased threats to eliminate “programs supported by the Democrats”, assuring that the blockage was “a big mistake” on their part.
The White House thus affirmed that it intended to fire at least 10,000 federal civil servants during this “shutdown”, before a federal judge suspended those already announced on Thursday.
More than 4,000 federal civil servants, who work in no fewer than seven departments, had received layoff notices, according to an October 10 court document.
Kevin Hassett, Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, expressed optimism Monday on CNBC that the blockade would be lifted “probably at some point this week.”
Otherwise, the White House will study what “stronger measures” to take to get the Democrats to put an end to it, he added.
