(Washington) American senators have reached an agreement intended to end the budgetary paralysis which has blocked part of the country’s public services for 40 days, a record, according to several American media.
Republican and Democratic elected officials have reached a provisional agreement allowing government financing until January, report CNN and Fox News in particular. A procedural vote must take place overnight.
“It looks like we are approaching the end of the shutdown,” President Donald Trump told the press, returning to the White House after spending the weekend in his Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago.
PHOTO JACQUELYN MARTIN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Donald Trump
After possible approval in the Senate, the text will still have to go before the House of Representatives, before being submitted to Donald Trump for signature.
Hundreds of thousands of federal civil servants have been working without pay since the start of the “shutdown” on 1er October, which disrupts the payment of social assistance and air traffic.
According to parliamentarians, the agreement reached in the Senate should make it possible to replenish the food aid program which supports 42 million Americans, and whose payments are disrupted by the budget blockage.
It would also involve reversing Donald Trump’s firing of thousands of federal workers last month, and holding a vote on extending health care aid, which is set to expire at the end of the year.
The proposal “will protect federal workers from wrongful termination, reinstate those who were wrongly fired during the shutdown, and ensure that federal workers receive their salaries retroactively,” Democratic Senator Tim Kaine said in a statement.
The leader of the Democratic minority in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, however deplored that the extension of health aid was subject to a vote and not a direct extension.
“This fight will and must continue,” he told the upper house.
