(Washington) With no end in sight, the budgetary paralysis in the United States is only a few hours away on Tuesday from a record longevity, while at the same time millions of Americans are going to the polls for the first test ballots of Trump’s second term.
At midnight on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, the “shutdown” will officially enter its 36e day and will thus exceed the previous mark, established in 2019 during the first term of the Republican billionaire.
“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think any of us expected this to drag on this long,” confessed the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, during a press conference at the Capitol.
Since 1er October and the expiration of the federal state budget, Republicans and Democrats were unable to agree to adopt a new text that would end the crisis.
Coincidence of the calendar, tens of millions of Americans vote on Tuesday, Virginia and New Jersey choosing their new governors and New York its new mayor.
Californians must decide whether or not to redraw their electoral maps to favor Democrats, in response to a similar campaign led by the White House in Republican states.
Food aid disrupted
So many votes whose results should serve as a barometer for Donald Trump’s first nine months since his return to the White House, and which could move the lines of budgetary paralysis.
The blockage led to the layoff of hundreds of thousands of civil servants. Hundreds of thousands of other public employees with “essential” missions are forced to continue working, without pay either.
Social benefits are also seriously disrupted. Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday that food aid paid to millions of Americans would be frozen until the “radical left Democrats” voted to lift the “shutdown”, while the courts ordered the administration to maintain this aid.
At airports, the stalemate is becoming increasingly felt with shortages of air traffic controllers leading to delays and cancellations of flights.
In Congress, the positions of the two camps are not changing: the Republicans are proposing an extension of the current budget, with the same spending levels, and the Democrats are calling for an extension of subsidies for health insurance programs for low-income households.
“Filibuster”
Without an extension, health insurance costs are expected to more than double in 2026 for 24 million Americans who use the public “Obamacare” program, according to KFF, a think tank specializing in health issues.
Due to the rules in force in the Senate, several Democratic votes are necessary to adopt a budget even if the Republicans have the majority.
But Donald Trump rejects any negotiation with the opposition on health without “reopening” the federal state as a prerequisite.
The billionaire on Tuesday reiterated his calls to get rid of this Senate rule which allows 41 senators out of 100 to block any bill before it is debated or voted on, a long-established parliamentary obstruction technique nicknamed “filibuster”.
“The Democrats have a much better chance of winning the midterm elections and the next presidential election if we do not put an end to the “filibuster” (the Nuclear Option!), because it will be impossible for the Republicans to implement common sense policies with these crazy Democrats capable of blocking everything,” asserted the president on his Truth Social platform.
However, he faces strong reluctance from Republican leaders in the Senate, for whom a repeal of these rules would create a dangerous precedent.
