US President Joe Biden has signed a temporary funding bill for the US government, allowing the US to avoid a partial government shutdown.

On Sunday, Biden wrote through his account on the “X” site (formerly Twitter): “I have signed a law to keep the government open for 47 days. There is plenty of time to pass government finance bills for the next financial year. .”

Biden added, “I strongly urge Congress to get to work immediately. The American people expect their government to succeed.”

and publish White House A statement from Biden said, “Tonight, bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate voted to keep the government open, averting an unnecessary crisis that would cause unnecessary pain to millions of hardworking Americans.”

The bill ensures that active-duty troops will continue to receive their paychecks, travelers will avoid delays at airports, millions of women and children will receive vital food assistance, and more, and that’s good news for the American people. to report.

“But I want to be clear,” Biden added in the statement, “we should never have been in this position in the first place. A few months ago, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and I reached a budget. Agreement to avoid this kind of artificial crisis.” selection.

For weeks, radical Republicans in the House of Representatives have been unsuccessfully trying to withdraw from the deal, demanding drastic cuts that would be devastating for millions of Americans, the report said.

The statement said, “While the Speaker of the House of Representatives and a majority of members of Congress remain steadfast in their support for Ukraine, the agreement contains no new funding to continue that support.”

The statement continued, “U.S. support for Ukraine cannot be allowed to be interrupted under any circumstances. I fully expect the Speaker of the House of Representatives to maintain his commitment to the people of Ukraine and ensure that the necessary support is met to help Ukraine at this critical time.”

Late Saturday, Congress passed the temporary funding bill with overwhelming support from Democrats after House Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy abandoned earlier demands by hardliners in his party that any bill be passed only with Republican votes.

Three hours before the government “shutdown”, the House of Representatives approved a text as a last-ditch effort to avoid a shutdown, before being approved by 88 members of the Senate, compared to 9 who rejected it, Agence France-Presse.

The Democratic-majority Senate voted 88-9 to pass a measure to avert the federal government’s fourth partial shutdown in a decade, sending Biden to sign the legislation before a 12:01 a.m. EDT (0401 GMT) deadline.

McCarthy abandoned a previous insistence by party hardliners that any bill must pass only with Republican votes, which would prompt an attempt to oust a far-right party member from his leadership role, Reuters reported.

The House of Representatives voted 335 to 91 in favor of funding the government for 45 days, and the matter received support from more Democrats than Republicans.

The vote represents a major shift from days ago when a lockdown seemed inevitable.

Any shutdown would leave most of the government’s four million employees without their paychecks, whether they work or not, and would cripple federal services ranging from national parks to the Financial Regulation Agency.

Saturday, September 30, 2023 – 7:59 PM

Muhammad Nabil Abu Taha/ Muhammad Jaballa/ Zakaria Mohideen

The U.S. moves closer to shutting down federal agencies at midnight today as lawmakers reach an impasse over agreeing a short-term spending bill and the chances of averting it dwindle.

The U.S. fiscal year begins tomorrow, Oct. 1, but bitter disagreements among Republicans over the size of the federal debt have prevented passage of bills needed to keep the government funded and open.

A hard-line Republican House of Representatives rejected any temporary measures to save the country from closing federal agencies. Yesterday, Republicans rejected a plan proposed by their leader, Kevin McCarthy, to temporarily fund the government through a draft law that voted 198 to 232.

Moody’s, the credit rating agency, warned that the shutdown would be “negative” for U.S. sovereign debt, threatening its top rating and driving higher borrowing costs.

Here’s what happens in the event of a federal shutdown in the US:

1. No pay for federal employees: Hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be on unpaid leave, while members of the military and other employees deemed “essential” will continue to work without pay. The American Federation of Government Employees estimates that a full shutdown would result in about 1.8 million federal employees receiving their full-time salaries, and about 850,000 non-essential employees would be placed on unpaid leave, according to the Committee for a Responsible Public Budget, an independent organization. If achieved, these restrictions will be lifted and all employees will be paid in advance, the union said.

2. Only essential services: Only essential services will continue to operate, Social Assistance checks continued to be paid during previous shutdowns, and air traffic controllers, border guards and hospital staff remained on duty, but many services are likely to remain. Surveys of food and environmental sites other than national parks, including new applications for social security and medical care, will also have a greater impact on the closure period.

3. Economic impact: Economists at Goldman Sachs estimate the shutdown will hurt economic growth by 0.2 percentage points each week in the fourth quarter, and Goldman’s note suggests it could take two to three weeks to lift the shutdown. Sachs economists dismissed it as saying “no immediate concessions have been made by either party”. According to the memo, “Even if the funding cuts were quickly lifted, the political environment before the (current) deadline is reminiscent of the situation a long time ago. The shutdowns.”

Oxford Economics estimates that the loss of productivity of government workers irreparably costs annual economic growth 0.1 percent a week, and a shutdown could indirectly hurt the economy because unpaid federal workers would cut back on their spending.

The potential shutdown is starting to weigh on Wall Street, with major stock indexes falling as the deadline nears.

4. No information for the Federal Reserve: Economists fear that the shutdown will also stop the release of federal government data, and that raises concerns about the Federal Reserve, which will be guided by this data to approve possible changes in interest rates. . The Federal Reserve has recently slowed the pace of raising interest rates as it tackles inflation.

In the absence of new data, the US Federal Reserve will be forced to make decisions with ramifications for the economy, without a clear picture of the situation, and the impact of a shutdown in the short term will be limited in the long term. , it could become a big problem if delegates fail to reach an agreement.