At the last moment

No shutdown: US Senate passes budget package

(Bild: APA/AFP/MANDEL NGAN)

The US Senate has passed a budget package worth trillions at the last moment. The vote began late Friday evening (local time) shortly before the deadline of one minute past midnight and ended early Saturday morning. It had been unclear until the end whether there would be a partial shutdown of government business - a so-called shutdown.

Theoretically, this was the case for a short time because the deadline passed before the vote was completed. However, this did not have an actual effect.

US President Joe Biden still has to sign the law - this is considered a formality. The White House announced during the night that it was assumed that this would happen on Saturday.

74 senators voted in favor of the package
On Friday afternoon, the budget package was approved by the House of Representatives with a cross-party majority. The fact that a vote in the Senate only took place shortly before the deadline was not due to a lack of majority, but to a parliamentary tactic by Republican senators. In the end, a total of 74 senators voted in favor of the package, 24 against.

The impact of a shutdown would initially have been minimal at the weekend, as most of the government employees affected by it are off work anyway.

What a shutdown means

A shutdown means that millions of government employees will no longer receive a salary. Many ministries and authorities have contingency plans for this scenario. The extent to which a shutdown affects everyday life and the economy in the USA ultimately depends on how long it lasts.

The 1.2 trillion US dollars (around 1.1 trillion euros) budget package that has now been passed finances a large part of the US government's operations for the current financial year, which runs until the end of September.

Among other things, it contains funds for defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Labor - but it does not include new US financial aid for other countries such as Ukraine. A corresponding legislative package is currently stuck in the House of Representatives.

Republicans and Democrats agreed on the budget package at the beginning of the week, after an initial, smaller package had already been passed. As a rule, Congress agrees on a large overall package to finance government operations. However, the budget was split up. The second part was still outstanding. Together, the two packages now amount to 1.66 trillion US dollars.

The arguments over this had lasted for months. In the meantime, Congress made do by passing several transitional budgets.