Congress will vote to lift the budget paralysis

(Washington) The US Congress is preparing to vote on Tuesday to end the budgetary paralysis, after three days of blockage caused by the Democrats’ refusal to finance Donald Trump’s immigration police.

The Republican president on Monday urged the House of Representatives to end this partial “shutdown” “without delay”.

“We must reopen the government and I hope all Republicans and Democrats will join me in supporting this law,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

“NO CHANGE is possible at this stage” on this budgetary text, warned Donald Trump, while the discontent displayed by some even in his camp threatened to prolong the paralysis.

A House committee voted Monday evening to advance this text towards a vote in the chamber, expected Tuesday. If approved, the text would go to Donald Trump for immediate promulgation which would lift the blockage.

Before the American president’s message, majority leaders had expressed their optimism about a short-term “shutdown”.

“We will manage to finish all of this by Tuesday, I am convinced,” preached the Republican President of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, on Sunday.

He went so far as to evoke a “formality” to describe the vote expected on Tuesday.

“Political games”

But with the arrival on Monday in Congress of a new Democratic representative after a partial legislative election in Texas, the manager knows that he cannot afford to lose more than one vote in his camp.

However, several elected officials from the ultraconservative fringe had threatened to oppose the text, because they categorically refuse to renegotiate the budget of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a demand from the Democrats.

“The Democrats are playing political games,” Republican MP Chip Roy of Texas said on Saturday, accusing the opposition of holding the DHS “hostage”.

The question of funding this important department is at the heart of the current blockage in Congress since the recent events in Minneapolis.

Democrats are outraged by the death at the end of January of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old American nurse shot and killed by federal agents on the sidelines of demonstrations against the presence of the immigration police (ICE), which depends on the DHS, in this metropolis in the northern United States.

Her death came less than three weeks after that of Renee Good, also shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis.

Since then, Democrats have insisted on their refusal to pass any budget for DHS without significant reforms being put in place.

In particular, they demand the systematic use of body-worn cameras for agents, a ban on the wearing of balaclavas and even that a judicial warrant precede any arrest.

“Under control”

“No one is above the law. ICE agents should be held to the same rules as any other law enforcement personnel in this country who risk their lives for us,” Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a news conference Monday at the Capitol.

The new version of the text, already approved by the Senate, allows the approval of five of the six budgetary sections, while the part concerning the DHS will be the subject of new negotiations over the next two weeks.

The United States will probably not experience a repeat of the blockage of October and November, when Republicans and Democrats battled for 43 days over the issue of health insurance subsidies.

Hundreds of thousands of civil servants had been placed on technical unemployment, while others, with missions considered essential, had to continue working. But everyone had to wait until the end of the budgetary paralysis to receive their salary.

The blockage only ended with the decision of a few Democratic senators to vote for a budget text concocted by the Republicans, in exchange for promises of concessions on these health insurance subsidies.

Their decision was strongly criticized by many Democratic supporters, who wanted to see a more vigorous opposition to Donald Trump.