Washington: Significant parts of the US federal government will shut down, and hundreds of thousands will be sent home or made to work without pay if Congress does not pass a funding plan and the president does not sign it by Friday midnight.

Mike Johnson, speaker of the Republican-led House of Representatives, told reporters that he has a plan that he expects to put to a floor vote in the morning.

After the end of the fiscal year on September 30, US Congress passed a temporary funding plan to keep the government running. This plan runs out Friday at midnight.

Johnson was forced to abandon bipartisan legislation negotiated by Republicans and Democrats to fund the government until mid-March due to opposition from President-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk.

They objected to expenditures put in the plan by Democrats, and Trump added a demand of his own to raise the debt ceiling, which is a limit put on the federal government’s ability to borrow to pay for expenses already committed; it does not authorise new expenditures.

The Republicans devised a slimmed-down plan backed by the president-elect. The plan was put to a vote in the House of Representatives on Thursday but failed overwhelmingly, with 174 in favour and 235 against.

Thirty-eight fiscally conservative Republicans voted against the plan in a stark revolt against the president-elect.

Even if the Republican-led House passed a funding plan, it would still require it to be passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate (Republicans will take control of the upper chamber in January), and then it would require President Joe Biden’s signature to go into effect.

According to a news report, the White House has said he would not have signed the legislation that was put to vote on Thursday and failed.

President-elect Trump is holding firm.

“If there is going to be a government shutdown, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under ‘TRUMP’. This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!”

A shutdown will impact most of the federal government but not all.

Exceptions are made for “essential” services, such as law enforcement and air traffic controllers, and those that are fee-funded, such as the State Department’s visa services and certain operations of the Citizenship and Immigration Department.

Essential services workers will not be paid, however, till a spending bill is approved by Congress. All other employees will be forced to stay home without pay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

–IANS
Photo: Xinhua