Donald Trump on Wednesday expressed his opposition to a budget agreement negotiated in Congress by Republicans and Democrats, thus allowing the specter of federal government paralysis to loom even further, as the clock now counts down to its approval, with the deadline to be midnight tomorrow Friday (s.b. local time; 07:00 Saturday Greek time).

The elected president and the elected vice president of J. D. Vance came out with a joint statement against the text, stressing that any concession to the Democrats would amount to “betrayal of our country” and that the Republicans should not be intimidated by the threat of the paralysis of the federal state apparatus, the famous shutdown.

“We should adopt a simplified text on spending that will not give (…) the Democrats everything they want,” says the announcement of the two men, who will take office on January 20.

The Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, presented yesterday Tuesday a 1,500-page agreement that emerged after negotiations with the Democrats. The text includes, among other things, financing of 100 billion. dollars for dealing with natural disasters that the outgoing president Joe Biden wanted, 10 billion. dollars to help American farmers — as well as funds for pay raises for members of the federal Congress.

If approved, the bill would guarantee federal funding through mid-March, preventing an early shutdown.

If not, the US will be faced with the paralysis of various federal public services, with hundreds of thousands of public workers placed on technical unemployment, the payment of benefits and various social assistances suspended, daycare centers closed and vital services such as air traffic control space, to be interrupted.

A situation that would cause many problems and huge popular discontent, on the eve of the year-end holidays.

But after the deal negotiated by the two parties in Congress became public, politicians close to Donald Trump, supporters of public shock therapy, rebelled against what they called senseless waste.

This is precisely the case, for example, of Elon Musk, an ally of Donald Trump who has been named head of a committee that will promote drastic cuts in public spending: he attacked the text with a flurry of posts on X, the social networking site he owns.

“Kill this bill,” the world’s richest man wrote repeatedly.

“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending plan deserves to lose in the (mid-term) elections in two years,” blasted the owner of companies like Tesla and SpaceX.