The United States Senate has approved with a large majority of votes a finance law that allocates a total of 1,200 billion dollars to finance more than half of the government’s activities for the next six months. Approved about 12 hours earlier by the Chamber, the proposal also had to be approved by the Senate by midnight (5am on Saturday morning in Italy) to avoid the so-called shutdownthe partial shutdown of government operations that occurs when Congress cannot agree on financial laws at the end of a fiscal year.
The law, which will now have to be signed by President Joe Biden, was approved with 74 votes in favor and 24 against around two in the morning: therefore shortly after the expiry of the last extension which had allowed continued financing of government activities. Shortly before, however, the government had issued a statement announcing that the Office of Management and Budget had stopped preparing for the shutdownsince there was already a lot of confidence that Congress would pass the rule.
The 1,200 billion budget approved by Congress is the result of months of negotiations and compromises, and received the approval of President Biden, the Speaker of the House (a sort of president of the chamber), the Republican Mike Johnson, and the leader of the majority in the Senate, Democrat Chuck Schumer. “It’s been a very long and difficult day, but we just reached an agreement to complete the government funding work,” Schumer said shortly before midnight.