(Washington) The President of the American House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, said on Sunday that he was “confident” in the fact that he will succeed in having a vote “by Tuesday” to end the budgetary paralysis of the federal state, caused by the debate on the methods of the immigration police in Minneapolis.
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This paralysis, which began on Saturday morning, seems for the moment to have minimal consequences, and an agreement reached on Thursday between Donald Trump and Democratic senators opened the way to a rapid exit from the crisis.
After adoption in the Senate on Friday, it is now up to the Republican-majority House to vote on this budgetary text which should make it possible to avoid the layoff of hundreds of thousands of civil servants.
Asked on NBC about the chances of success in adopting the text, Mike Johnson declared on Sunday: “Let’s say that I am confident in the fact that we will do it by Tuesday.”
But several uncertainties remain. On the one hand, a winter storm risks complicating the return of elected officials to Washington, where the House resumes its session on Monday.
On the other hand, the Democratic minority in the lower house has not yet said whether it will follow its fellow senators and vote, or not, alongside the Republicans to limit the paralysis of the state.
Mike Johnson suggested Sunday on NBC that his very thin Republican majority will have to do without the Democrats. “Yes, I have only one vote margin for the rest of 2026,” he said, asserting that his group “is going to do what is responsible and fund the state.”
The position of the Democratic minority in the House will be decided on Sunday afternoon, its boss Hakeem Jeffries said on ABC.
PHOTO MARIAM ZUHAIB, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Minority Leader in the House of Representatives
Three months after the longest budgetary paralysis in the country’s history, the federal government financing process was taking its parliamentary course in January — until the death of Alex Pretti, killed by federal agents in Minneapolis.
This new drama has caused great emotion in the country and pushed the Democratic opposition to refuse to sign a blank check to the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, which manages operations targeting undocumented immigrants in Minnesota.
This department “must undergo in-depth reform,” insisted Hakeem Jeffries on Sunday, repeating some of the Democratic demands: pedestrian cameras for police officers and a ban on being masked.
