[Economics] US Congress Approves 2023 Budget Including $45 Billion for Ukraine

[FNX Magokiler]

The United States Congress approved this Friday the budget for fiscal year 2023, which in its spending package of 1.7 trillion dollars includes 45,000 million in aid to Ukraine. The House of Representatives gave its approval to that bill by 225 votes in favor and 201 against, one day after the Senate, also with a Democratic majority, had validated it by 68 votes in favor and 29 against.

The two chambers had approved, just in case, a parallel resolution that extended the current budgets for another week, until December 30, to guarantee that the federal Administration remains open while the new ones are promulgated. The urgency was double: this Friday at midnight the funds for the operation of the Administration expired. In addition, if the discussion was extended, the winter storm that hits the center and the north of the country threatened to leave congressmen stranded in Washington on Christmas Eve. More than half of legislators voted remotely. In less than two weeks, on January 3, the Republicans will assume control of the Lower House after the Democrats lost it in the November legislative elections, for which reason the latter wanted to leave the budget closed. The President of the United States, Joe Biden, must sign it now for it to take effect and he said that he will do so as soon as it arrives at his table.

"The bipartisan bill advances key priorities for our country and caps a year of historic bipartisan progress for the American people. It's good for our economy, our competitiveness and our communities," he said in a statement. That budget for fiscal year 2023, which runs from October 1, 2022 to September 30, contemplates a defense item valued at some 858,000 million dollars and another 800,000 million for other items, the latter an increase of 9, 3% compared to the previous year. It also covers $40.6 billion to address droughts, hurricanes, floods, fires, and other natural disasters and emergencies in the United States and about $45 billion in economic, humanitarian, and security aid for Ukraine.

 

 

Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky, who visited Washington on Wednesday to meet with Biden, defended that day in Congress that money for his country is not charity: "It is an investment in global security and democracy." "As you have made clear to us, your country will need our continued support to end this war, which must come through a strategic defeat of (Russian President) Vladimir Putin, one of the greatest war criminals in world history. "said today the leader of the Democratic majority in the Lower House, Steny Hoyer. The bill came to that chamber after the debate in the Senate was hampered by two amendments on the management of the border with Mexico that were rejected. The regulations do include a reform to provide greater guarantees to the electoral count, by clarifying that the vice president does not have the power to revoke the results of the presidential elections. That change comes on the eve of the second anniversary of the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol, while Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump was being certified in November 2020, and when the legislative committee investigating those events has targeted the former Republican President as the person most responsible for what happened. "It will guarantee that this shameful attack on our democracy will not be repeated," Hoyer said, celebrating that he made it clear that the role of the vice president does not have the power to revoke those results, despite what Trump claimed in 2021 by putting pressure on his then "number two" , Mike Pence, to reject them. For the current leader of the Republican minority in the Lower House, Kevin McCarthy, who is emerging as its president in January, however, everything was criticism of that budget: "Inflation, the economy and the government will worsen," he said, regretting that they have not been given sufficient time to go through its nearly 4,100 pages.

 

https://www.emol.com/noticias/Internacional/2022/12/23/1081972/eeuu-aprueba-presupuesto-ayuda-ucrania.html