The United States is getting ever closer to shutdown. The House of Representatives rejected the bill to postpone the raising of the debt ceiling born from the internal agreement within the Republican Party, after Donald Trump he had scuttled the previous compromise with the Democrats on the advice of Elon Musk.
During the night between Thursday 19th and Friday 20th, negotiations continued between the two parties to reach an agreement, but the Democrats they exclude the possibility of postponing the update of the debt ceiling for two years, a move proposed by Trump which would take away much of the opposition’s bargaining power until the next mid-term elections.
US debt deal collapsed
The second attempt at mediation between the two also failed Democrats and Republicans to find an agreement on the US debt ceiling. The country is risking a shutdown, the closure of all non-essential public offices, starting from midnight between Friday 20th and Saturday 21st December, if the two parties do not reach an agreement in time.
A compromise had actually been reached before December 18, but Elon Musk, President-elect Donald Trump’s future minister, began to strongly criticize the law. A few hours later Trump defined “Traitors of the homeland” all Republicans intend to vote for the agreement granting the State the possibility of spending public money on so-called non-essential services, such as schools or tax offices.
The agreement immediately fell through and internal negotiations began within the Republican Party to understand what Trump’s objective was. The future president asked to postpone raising the debt ceiling for two years. On this basis, the Republicans proposed a new compromise to the Democrats, which however the party of outgoing president Joe Biden rejected.
Negotiations between the two parties will continue throughout the day on Friday 20th, but the positions are very far apart. If an agreement is not reached by the end of the day, the US federal state will go into shutdown.
Why Democrats rejected Trump’s proposal
The compromise proposed by Trump was assessed as completely inadmissible by Democrats. The president-elect has basically asked the opposition to give up a good part of its bargaining power in congress for the first two years of his term.
Laws to increase the debt ceiling, the so-called Appropriations Act, are fundamental for every president, as they allow public money to be spent and finance various measures. They are the closest thing to a state budget law, but they require the approval of Congress. However, parties often do not vote together, because each Senator or Representative has his own particular initiative to approve and makes his vote count even by going against the line dictated by the leadership.
For this reason, to raise the debt ceiling an agreement between Democrats and Republicans is almost always needed, and this gives the minority faction one of the few opportunities to force the president to make decisions that go in the direction, if not opposite, at least different from the intentions of his government program.
