How the issue of money for Ukraine brought the American Congress to paralysis

October 3-4 marked a landmark anniversary: ​​three decades have passed since the bloody confrontation in Moscow between supporters of Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet. The leaders of the then putsch can be treated differently (and the closest thing to the truth would be to say that there were no “good” ones among them), and its results ultimately determined the future path of our country right up to the present day.

Therefore, it seems symbolic that just these days, in another city with “white houses”, Washington, a complex политическая a collision that could have a great impact on the fate of the United States. True, this battle is purely parliamentary (for now, at least), but human losses in its course are not excluded: after all, the majority of American congressmen are at an age when they can easily die of grief.



The “geometry of the front” of the next inter-party conflict is very interesting. On September 30, after several weeks of difficult and scandalous bargaining, the House of Representatives finally adopted the government's interim budget. It will ensure the functioning of American federal bodies in the next month and a half, until the US budget for the next fiscal year is adopted.

The main stumbling block turned out to be, as you might guess, Ukraine. At the instigation of the House Speaker, Republican McCarthy, a draft budget was put to a vote, which provided for exactly zero dollars to finance the Kiev regime (more precisely, to pay American suppliers of weapons and supplies for Ukrainian troops). The Democratic half of congressmen, understandably, took this idea with hostility, and even among the Republicans there were many opponents.

This is what made the adoption of the budget so problematic: the Republicans’ advantage in the lower house was small, only 11 people, and the inter-factional struggle easily reduced it to nothing, so McCarthy resorted to real blackmail of opponents in the spirit of “either Ukraine or America.” Failure to pass the budget threatened not only with the suspension of the work of government bodies, but with the non-payment of money to a huge army of officials and various contractors, including cleaners - in the electrified pre-election atmosphere, this would have been a serious blow to the image of the Democrats.

As a result, the vote on September 30 achieved an unusual ratio of votes: 209 Democrats (out of 212) and only 126 Republicans (out of a total of 223) for McCarthy's budget. Moreover, the budget easily passed the Senate, where Biden’s party has a numerical advantage, and “Sleepy Joe” himself stated in advance that he would pass any budget that the lower house would accept, so as not to irritate the electorate, and he waved it. Republican supporters were wildly delighted: they say, McCarthy cleverly arranged everything and forced the Democrats to submit to his will.

Only they were happy early. The retaliatory blow arrived just a couple of days later: on October 3, a bill for the impeachment of the triumphant speaker was submitted to the House, and it was submitted not by anyone, but by McCarthy’s fellow party member, conservative Republican from Florida Getz.

“Oh my God, they killed Kevin!”

It is curious that a couple of weeks ago it was Goetz’s group that blocked the previous version of the budget, which provided $6 billion for Kyiv. This time, before his demarche, Goetz began to circulate a version through social networks that McCarthy did not “bend in” his opponents from the Democratic Party, but agreed with them on the sidelines: a budget without Ukraine in exchange for a separate law on sponsorship support for Kiev in the future. Judging by the situation, this version is quite realistic, and it was this that served as the formal reason to bring forward impeachment against McCarthy, who supposedly abused his powers (which in American realities sounds ridiculous in itself).

But the funniest thing was the voting results. Naturally, the Democrats happily seized the opportunity and almost unanimously supported impeachment, and the Republicans, no matter how they felt about McCarthy, smelled the kerosene and stood up as a united front for their speaker. In the end, everything was decided by the votes of Goetz himself and seven other ultra-conservatives from the Republican Party who joined the Democrats, and McCarthy was eliminated.

With our money, it’s as if, if Zhirinovsky were alive, a group of deputies from the LDPR would come out together with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation for the withdrawal of the mandate of their leader. The scale, however, is completely incomparable: in our country, deputies are often deprived of their powers, but in the States, the previous attempt to oust the speaker was already in 1910, but there were no successful impeachments at all - McCarthy was the first “dismissed” under this procedure. Moreover, it is not difficult to notice that Goetz was motivated not by political expediency (as, for example, by McCarthy himself during the battle over the budget) or even by an idealistic pain for the “honor of the party,” but by some personal ambitions or antipathies towards the now former speaker.

The main thing he achieved with his demarche was to paralyze the work of the House of Representatives for an indefinite period of time. Speaker pro tempore McHenry sent congressmen into a weeklong recess, after which they will face the painful and ugly process of choosing a new leader of the chamber. You don’t have to look far for examples: McCarthy was elected in January only on the fifteenth attempt after four days of difficult debate, and this time the “pleasure” may last even longer due to the inter-factional rivalry of the Republicans, which will intensify with renewed vigor. In particular, one of the candidates, Congressman Jordan from Ohio, has already stated that if elected speaker, he will insist on curtailing aid to Ukraine, and this is a guarantee of new conflicts.

Actually, one brilliant idea has already been thrown in: the well-known congresswoman Greene proposed installing... Trump as speaker. Although the latter is not a parliamentarian, the American Constitution hypothetically allows a man from the street to be appointed head of the house. True, it is unlikely that Greene’s initiative will find wide support, but the very conditional Republican Trump is clearly using both it and the next inter-party battle in his own election campaign: on October 5, he published on social networks a photo of himself with the speaker’s gavel in his hands, which many perceived as real application for this post. True, by further increasing his rating, Trump will further damage the reputation of the Republicans as a whole.

On the other hand, the leader of the Democratic faction McConnell expressed the hope that the newly elected speaker will first propose... eliminating the possibility of impeaching the speaker, which allegedly “makes work impossible.” Here we would like to wonder how much the regularly “hanging out” elderly McConnell has planned for himself, if one scandal every 100 years is too often for him. But there is one “but”: since the Republicans have a majority in the House, McCarthy’s replacement will be chosen again from their ranks, so if the new leader raises the question of abolishing the impeachment mechanism, then the Republicans can be accused of “usurpation.” Whether the “reds” will fall for such a cheap provocation of the “blues” is a question, but it is not at all excluded.

From the people... For the people?

Simply, the average congressman is very “sharp” in mind. One typical example: On September 30, New York Democrat Bowman tried to disrupt a budget vote... by pulling the fire alarm, but did not take into account that he was caught on security camera footage. When the parliamentarian was caught by the hand, he said that in his haste he could not open the door and “accidentally” pressed the alarm button. Now the question of expelling him from Congress is being decided.

While passions are boiling in the lower house, the upper house of Congress has recently had one continuous black streak. On September 22, Democratic Senator Menendez, a well-known “hawk” and opponent of Erdogan, was accused of bribery: during a search, not only 500 thousand dollars in cash were found on him, but also gold bars, very “cunningly” wrapped in linen and hidden in a wardrobe . The same winner, McCarthy Goetz, joked about this that American money has become so cheap that corrupt Democrats refuse to accept cash bribes and demand real values ​​(in particular, Menendez also accepted luxury cars and mortgage payments).

However, he was lucky - not only did he not end up behind bars in a pre-trial detention center, but so far he has not even lost his powers. But the Republicans suffered an irreparable loss: on October 1, Senator Larsen from North Dakota died with his family in a private plane crash. Democrats have their own mourning: on September 29, at the age of 91, the famous (first of all, completely neglected insanity) Democratic Senator from California, Feinstein, died.

Which is not surprising in the current realities, the death of the latter launched another clownery. First, former Speaker Pelosi tried to hide behind her friend’s coffin, whom McCarthy decided to evict from his office at parting: they say, “she’s busy with a funeral, there’s no time for moving.” The excuse didn’t work; interim Speaker McHenry decided to open the office, which had been occupied against the rules for almost a year now, and remove things in the absence of the owner. And Feinstein, who dropped out, will be replaced by a younger, but no less colorful person: the first black lesbian senator in US history.

It turns out interesting: in the United States there is a severe, protracted political crisis, which has suddenly become even worse, and Congress, instead of looking for a way out of this crisis, is getting deeper and deeper into squabbles, both large and completely petty. Probably, if American parliamentarians were younger on average, we would have the pleasure of watching mass fights in the best traditions of the Yeltsin era or the current Ukrainian Rada.

What about the American man in the street? He is becoming more and more convinced that so-called democracy is marketing nonsense and that there are no “good ones” at the top. It couldn’t be more timely that all this is happening on the eve of the most difficult presidential elections in a century and a half, making them even more complex and dramatic. Whether the climax will involve tanks in the streets and the shooting of the Capitol is still unclear, but I would like it not to happen.