After passage by the Senate, the House of Representatives approved the budget bill with 222 votes in favor and 209 against. The text was promulgated by the American president.
On Wednesday, November 12, Donald Trump promulgated the law putting an end to the longest budgetary paralysis in the United States, which he took advantage of to crush the Democratic opposition and once again praise his economic policy. “We will never give in to blackmail,” said the American president, signing the text adopted shortly before by the American Congress, after 43 days which disrupted several parts of the American economy.
Seeking to emerge victorious from this interminable standoff, he attacked the “extremists of the other party”, accusing them of having shut down the government for “purely political reasons”. Donald Trump said: “The country has never been better off”, even as polls show growing dissatisfaction among Americans with the economy.
After the Senate passed it on Monday, the House of Representatives approved the budget bill with 222 votes in favor and 209 against. Only six elected Democrats joined the presidential majority, while two Republicans expressed their disagreement.
The Democrats folded
After more than 40 days of budget impasse, a handful of Democratic senators finally surrendered on Monday by approving with their Republican colleagues a new bill, which extends the previous budget until the end of January. The text, however, leaves unclear the extension of subsidies for “Obamacare”, health insurance for low-income households, to the great dismay of the base and many elected Democrats.
Donald Trump has made no secret of his intentions, calling this system a “disaster” and a “nightmare” that should be removed. He ruled that instead of subsidizing a collective system, funding should be redistributed “directly” to Americans so that they can choose their health insurance individually. Among the only concessions to the opposition, the text provides for the reinstatement of civil servants dismissed since the start of the “shutdown”.
It also includes funds for the SNAP food assistance program until September, thus preventing this aid, which benefits more than 42 million Americans, from being frozen in the event of another budgetary paralysis at the end of January, as was the case during the current blockage.
Due to the rules of political consensus in the Senate, which the American president once again called on Wednesday to abandon, eight votes from the opposition were necessary to adopt the text. And the eight in question have attracted the wrath of many members of the Democratic camp, who denounce meager concessions and false Republican promises.
California Governor Gavin Newsom bemoaned X’s “surrender.”
Many Democrats also wondered why these senators gave in just days after their party’s large victories in important elections across the country, which they said validated their strategy in Congress.
Medical help
Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries again called on Republicans Wednesday evening to keep their promise to hold a vote soon on “Obamacare.”
“We believe that working-class Americans, middle-class Americans, and everyday Americans deserve the same level of certainty that Republicans always provide to the rich, the wealthy, and the long-armed donors,” he said in a speech from the chamber.
“It is not too late” to extend these subsidies, added the Democratic tenor. The question of these subsidies is at the heart of the dispute which led to the “shutdown”. Without their extension, health insurance costs are expected to more than double in 2026 for 24 million Americans who use “Obamacare”, according to KFF, a think tank specializing in health issues.
Since October 1, more than a million civil servants have not been paid. The payment of some aid has been severely disrupted, and tens of thousands of flights have been canceled in recent days due to shortages of air traffic controllers, as some had chosen to call in sick rather than work without pay.
