Johnson announces ‘Plan C’ against government shutdown

The president of the US House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson, announced this Friday (20) that a “plan C” has been drawn up to try to avoid a government shutdown at midnight and said that the plenary will vote on the proposal throughout the day.

“Yes, yes, we have a plan. We expect to vote this morning, so stay tuned. We have a plan,” he said upon his arrival at the Capitol, without going into details.

This is the third proposal to try to avoid a partial shutdown of the Executive branch if it is not possible to reach an agreement on the expansion of the budget before then.

The first, bipartisan, was never voted on after pressure exerted against some resolutions by the president-elect, also Republican Donald Trump, and his right-hand man, tycoon Elon Musk, who in the next government will take on the task of cutting federal spending and bureaucracy. .

The Republicans reformulated the proposal and presented a unilateral alternative to the lower house on Thursday, which maintained the extension of the budget until March and included the suspension of the debt ceiling until 2027, but the Democratic opposition and 38 conservative congressmen prevented it from going ahead. .

If the House of Representatives manages to pass another bill this Friday, the proposal will go to the Senate, where Democrats are in control, making it difficult for an initiative with bipartisan support to succeed.