The Democrats have closed ranks.

The US Congress adopted on Friday a vast budget bill for federal services, totaling 1.7 trillion dollars, including 45 billion for Ukraine.

After that of the Senate on Thursday, this vote by 225 votes against 201 of the House of Representatives makes it possible to avoid the paralysis of the American federal administration (the famous “shutdown”), which could have intervened on Friday evening.

President Joe Biden has yet to sign the law into law with his signature.

"This bill is good for our economy, our competitiveness and our people - and I will sign it as soon as it is on my desk," he said in a statement on Friday.

"This bill is an essential piece of legislation not only to finance the state, to pay our civil servants, but also to show that the American state works", declared before the vote the leader of the elected Democrats in the House, Steny Hoyer.

Election amendment

This budget must finance the functioning of the American federal state - law enforcement, diplomacy, armed forces, economic policy, etc.

- until September 2023. It also includes an amendment to a law dating from the 19th century to mention that the American vice-president cannot intervene directly in the certification of electoral results.

Donald Trump had used the ambiguities of the old text to suggest that Mike Pence, his vice-president, could have stopped the coming to power of Joe Biden after a victory that the incumbent Republican did not want to recognize - one of the elements which led to the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump, a new candidate for 2024, on Thursday called the text an “abomination”, blaming it on the “far left”, the elites of the capital and lobbying.

Zelensky's thanks

With a Democratic majority in the Chamber for a few more days, and two days after a visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warmly welcomed by the vast majority of parliamentarians, the positive outcome of the passage of the text was hardly in doubt.

The Ukrainian president thanked the American elected officials after the vote.

Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the Republicans in the House, had however called on the elected representatives of his camp to vote against the bill, in order to benefit from greater leeway when the holidays returned, when the new Republican majority in the Chamber, resulting from the midterm elections, will take office.

But Republican senators largely ignored it on Thursday afternoon, giving Democrats nearly 20 votes to pass the text 68 to 29 before the House adopted it on Friday.

Before the vote, elected Republicans in the House of Representatives took the floor to denounce the lack of time granted to them to study the text - it was finalized three days ago - and to criticize the presence of provisions qualified as "woke", such as the financing of projects in support of the LGBT+ community.

But McCarthy did not repeat his performance from last year, when he held the microphone for eight-and-a-half hours to hold off the vote - everyone hoping to make it to their families in time for the holidays while avoiding the winter storm that is hitting the country.

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