The US Congress on Saturday passed a bill aimed at funding the federal government until September and preventing a “shutdown” of the world’s largest economy, the paralysis of its public services, AFP and Agerpres reported.

Senators were unable to pass the bill by midnight Friday, which would have led to a shutdown. But elected officials finally agreed on the final passage of this $1.2 trillion financial bill.

“It wasn’t easy, but our persistence was worth it,” US Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said after hours of tense talks with Republicans.

“It’s good for the Americans that we reached an agreement,” he added before final approval of the text.

This small delay should have affected the US departments, which were at risk of being deprived of funding due to the lack of an agreement.

More than a great danger to the United States, these last-minute upheavals illustrate the chaos in Congress.

Over the past year, the institution has removed one of its managers, failed to send funds to Ukraine, and narrowly avoided the bankruptcy of the world’s largest economy.

A theatrical blow from the House of Representatives

On Friday morning, the vote on the federal budget in the House of Representatives, which was supposed to approve this text in turn, became the scene of spectacular reversals.

Minutes after the vote, Marjorie Taylor Green, a Republican close to Donald Trump, said she had filed a petition to fire the agency’s head, Republican Mike Johnson, whom she accused of “treason.”

Several ultra-conservative elected officials have accused the Republican, who has been in office since October, of making too many budget concessions to Democrats.

“We need a new president,” said the politician, known to journalists for her excesses, provocations and offensive statements.

Such a theatrical coup is not new.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was impeached just a few months ago in a very similar scenario.

Will Mike Johnson become the second Republican leader to fall victim to budget negotiations?

The law does not release funding for Ukraine

The tension surrounding the passage of these financial laws is such that the United States has so far been unable to pass a budget for 2024 – a situation no other major global economy faces.

Instead, they worked for months on end, passing mini-budgets that expire in a few weeks, a headache for US departments.

The law would extend the US budget through the end of the fiscal year on September 30.

This 1,012-page text, the result of very tough negotiations, contains measures that would have a strong resonance abroad.

The text bans any direct funding from the United States to the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, which has been at the center of controversy since Israel accused 12 of its 13,000 staff in Gaza of involvement in the deadly October 7 Hamas attack.

The law also includes hundreds of millions of dollars for Taiwan, but does not include funding for Ukraine, as the package for Kyiv is the subject of separate negotiations.

The text also contains several measures related to immigration, an explosive topic in the midst of a presidential campaign, and a long list of provisions that are not necessarily related to the budget.

For example, US embassies are prohibited from flying the rainbow flag, the flag of the LGBT+ community, unlike what some of them did during Pride Month.

The text adopted on March 9 already allowed to finalize one more part of the budget for 2024.