After several weeks of political confrontation, only his signature remained, which was beyond the shadow of a doubt. It's done: US President Joe Biden signed into law on Saturday, June 3, the law that eliminates the risk of a default in payment by the United States.
The Democratic president thanked House officials, including Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy, for their "collaboration" on the matter, according to the White House statement released Saturday.
Congress adopted this week this text which allows the public debt ceiling of the United States to be suspended until January 2025, and which also sets certain budgetary objectives. Without this legislation, approved on Wednesday by the House of Representatives with a Republican majority and then Thursday in the Senate, with a Democratic majority, the country risked being in default of payment as of Monday, June 5.
"Nothing could have been more irresponsible, nothing could have been more catastrophic," Trump said in a solemn address from the Oval Office on Friday. “Finding consensus across partisan divides is difficult. Unity is difficult. But we must never stop trying,” he added, echoing the message of reconciliation that had marked the start of his term, and which now punctuates his campaign for 2024.
Each side claims a victory
Because the stakes of this financial confrontation were also very political. Candidate for re-election, Joe Biden knows that his first handicap is his age, 80 years old. He hopes that this soap opera on the debt, which kept the American political and media world spellbound, reinforces an image of a competent and reasonable leader.
Joe Biden thus held on Friday to "greet" his most prominent opponent in this debt file, the Republican boss of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy. For the latter, it was a question of consolidating his authority over a motley parliamentary group, between moderate conservatives and vociferous supporters of former President Donald Trump; also a presidential candidate for 2024, the Republican billionaire had called for keeping a hard line in negotiations with the White House.
In the end, each side more or less claims victory. The Republicans are delighted to have pulled off a freeze on certain expenditures, the Democrats are pleased to have essentially preserved social benefits as well as major investments.
On account
This altogether austere fight around public finances, which had already taken place when Barack Obama was president, will probably not have a great effect on the 2024 election.
But it left some traces: the rating agency Fitch thus kept the precious AAA rating of the United States under surveillance on Friday, deploring the "political polarization" and noting "a constant deterioration of the country's governance over the fifteen last years ".
Like almost all developed economies, the United States lives on credit – it also has the heaviest debt in the world, in absolute terms. But no other industrialized country comes up against a rigid debt ceiling at regular intervals, which Congress is forced to raise.
