Final negotiations in Washington to avoid government paralysis

It is a race against time for the American parliamentarians responsible for adopting a budget before Thursday midnight if they want to avoid the sudden drying up of finances from the federal government, while Congress must simultaneously settle several hot topics for Joe Biden. The stakes are so high that the Democratic president preferred to cancel a trip scheduled for Wednesday, September 29, to Chicago to stay in Washington and conduct negotiations with key elected officials of his group.

The former senator, who praises his talents as a conciliator, hopes to extract his two titanic investment projects, in infrastructure and social reforms, of the dead end into which they were plunged by fratricidal struggles between democrats. At the same time, another crucial mission falls to parliamentarians: to avoid the collapse of public finances in two stages.

On the one hand, they must approve in the next few hours a mini-budget valid until December to avoid paralysis of the federal government, because the current finance law expires Thursday evening at midnight. On the other hand, they must raise, by October 18, the debt capacity of the United States if they want to avoid the first sovereign default of the world’s greatest economic power.

“Time is running out, the danger is real”

The first front, approve a temporary budget, should be the easiest to settle, because there is consensus. But, in an explosive atmosphere in Congress, where partisan divisions are alive, everything is complicated. After a day of waiting, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer announced that the vote would finally take place Thursday morning, on a text that would extend the current budget until December 3. Republican senators are expected to vote in sufficient numbers for this mini-budget to be approved. He must then receive the green light from the House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats, before he can be promulgated by Joe Biden.

Warning shot on Wall Street: markets are worried about stagflation and political blockage in Washington