New Year’s Eve week in the United States is taking place amid a struggle for a new budget. The Christmas American race against time, just to avoid another government closure, has already become a good tradition.
At the very beginning of 2018, America experienced a short three-day shutdown due to controversies over granting official status to children of illegal immigrants, who are often called “dreamers”.
And in the winter of 2019, the conflict between the White House and the Democrats in Congress led to the longest shutdown in US history – it lasted 35 days. Then Trump demanded funds for the construction of the border wall, and the Democrats, who had just won the elections, were against.
Now the United States is again facing the threat of a shutdown – this time the stumbling block was the plan to provide financial assistance to Americans in the context of the epidemic.
After much debate in Congress, a gigantic 5,500 document was built that none of the ordinary lawmakers could master. It is four and a half times larger than Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
There are already parables about the absurdity of the adopted document – money is being allocated there for the development of feminism in Central Asia with Afghanistan, and for the fight against truants in the Philippines. It turned out to be such a team hodgepodge for lobbyists engaged in budget development.
Trump refused to sign it – he demands from Congress a “clean” document with the support of the Americans, where money would not go down on nonsense like “gender lessons” in Pakistan.
The only problem is that this plan simultaneously includes the state budget for the next nine months. Therefore, freezing it will lead to another government shutdown.
Trump now temporarily has the right to “pocket veto” – simply not to sign the draft budget, and it will be canceled after the meeting of the new session of Congress in January. By that time, America has already plunged into a “shutdown” – and this will be the symbolic beginning of the Biden presidency.
Malek Dudakov