Risk of budgetary paralysis | Trump meets Democratic leaders

(Washington) Donald Trump receives the main republican officials and Democrats in the US Congress on Monday, when negotiations between the two camps are stalled before the paralysis on Tuesday evening of the federal state.

At midnight in the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, without adoption of a even temporary budgetary text, the United States will be in a situation of “Shutdown”, with the consequence of the arrest of most federal services.

Hundreds of thousands of civil servants will then be unemployed, air traffic could be affected, while the payment of many social aids should be strongly disrupted.

A very unpopular situation therefore, that Democrats as Republicans traditionally try to avoid while rejecting responsibility on the rival camp. All the more in the perspective of the mid-term legislative elections in November 2026, during which the presidential majority in the congress will be called into question.

Less than 48 hours from the deadline, each camp however in their entrenchments.

On the one hand, the Republicans offer an extension of the current budget until the end of November. On the other hand, Democrats want to obtain hundreds of billions of dollars in health spending, especially in the “Obamacare” health insurance program for households in the working classes, which the Trump administration has planned to eliminate with its budgetary “large and beautiful law” adopted in July.

“In good faith”

If the Republicans have the majority to the two chambers of the congress, the Senate regulations make that a budgetary text should be adopted in 60 votes out of 100, therefore requiring seven democratic votes.

The republican leader of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, assured the Fox News channel on Sunday that Donald Trump was “open to discussion” and wanted to “act in good faith”, before the meeting in the White House in which he will participate, alongside the chief of the Republican majority in the Senate, John Thune, and Democratic officials Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.

For Chuck Schumer, head of the Democrat minority in the Senate, this meeting is only a “first step”, evoking on NBC News on Sunday the need for a “serious negotiation”.

His counterpart in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, said he wanted to find “common ground” which “really meets the needs of Americans on health, security, and economic well-being”.

“I hope we will avoid the” Shutdown “,” he told ABC News.

Nothing is less certain, the White House seeming not wanting to give a thumb of land to the opposition.

“All this is the fault of the Democrats. They asked us to do unreasonable things, “said Donald Trump last week.

“Memory politicard”

In an attempt to make the Democrats bend, its director of the budget office at the White House, Russell Vought, also brandished the threat of making permanent reduction in the workforce of civil servants who would be unemployed during the “Shutdown”.

If the congress adopts a budgetary bill before the deadline, “the additional steps described in this email will not be necessary,” said the memo of the OMB, of which AFP has obtained a copy.

Hakeem Jeffries had Russell Vought in the stride qualified as “bad politicard” and declared on X: “We will not let ourselves be intimidated”.

In March, when the threat of a “Shutdown” already hovered, the Republicans had refused to initiate dialogue on the huge budget cuts and the dismissal of thousands of civil servants.

Ten Democratic Senators, including Chuck Schumer, had then reluctantly decided to vote for the text of the Republicans, in order to avoid federal paralysis.

Their choice had provoked lively eddies in the Democratic camp, many activists and sympathizers accusing them of folding against Donald Trump and his program deemed radical.

This time, the seventy in the seventies seems to be determined to engage the confrontation with the republican president.