The White House and congressional officials announced on Tuesday March 19 that they had reached an agreement to continue funding the American federal administration, a text which must be adopted before the end of the week. “We have reached an agreement with the leaders of Congress,” Joe Biden announced in a press release, without indicating the amount of this budget.
The United States has been struggling for several months to adopt a finance law for the year 2024. Entangled in partisan quarrels, Congress has so far only been able to adopt a series of mini- laws to extend the federal state budget by a few days, a few months at most.
As soon as one of these mini-budgets is about to expire, as one of them should be on Friday, there is a risk that the federal administration will be partially shut down, what the Americans call the shutdown.
The list of potential consequences is long: unpaid air traffic controllers, shut down administrations, frozen food aid, unmaintained national parks.
The agreement announced Tuesday would extend the US budget until the end of the fiscal year, September 30. It must now be adopted in the House of Representatives, in the Senate, then be promulgated by the President of the United States to repel this threat. A text adopted on March 9 had already made it possible to complete another part of the 2024 budget.
