The US Congress resumed its activity this Monday, after the midterm elections on November 8, with the leadership in the Senate already secured by the Democrats, but with the future of the House of Representatives still open.
Both chambers suspended legislative activity at the end of September, so that the electoral campaign could take place.
The return to activity occurred this Monday, although the vote count is still being carried out in some districts of the country.
The expectation is that the new Congress that comes out of the elections will inaugurate the new legislature on January 3.
Meanwhile, control of the House of Representatives, where 19 seats remain unallocated, remains pending.
According to the most recent projections of various North American media, the Republicans have an advantage over the Democrats, of 212 seats against 204, in a total of 435.
Votes are still being counted in Alaska’s largest district, two in Arizona -where there are some 290,000 votes to be counted-, 10 in California, two in Colorado, one in Maine, one in New Mexico, one in New York and one in Oregon. .
Results for some of these districts, specifically on the West Coast, are being delayed due to the high volume of mail-in ballots recorded in the November 8 election.
Most states have mail-in ballot signature verification systems that are slowing down the process.
In the upper house, the Senate, the second round has not yet been held in Georgia, which took place on December 6 and opposes the Republican Herschel Walker and the Democrat Raphael Warnock.
But this duel will no longer count to decide who leads the Senate, because with the victory in Arizona, the Democrats secured the majority thanks to the tie-breaking vote of the vice president of the country, Kamala Harris.
The Democrats of the head of state Joe Biden had until mid-term control of both chambers and were apprehensive, because the party in the White House is traditionally penalized at the polls. However, the Republican “red tide” predicted by the polls and the ‘averages’ came to a halt.
In the medium term, the US Congress has as a priority to approve a new spending bill that avoids the closure [shutdown, em inglês] of public administration. The agreement reached on September 30 allows management until December 16 until a new agreement is reached.
On the Senate’s agenda is the approval of a bill that protects homosexual marriage at the federal level, and a reform that will allow greater guarantees for the electoral count is also pending, to clarify that the vice president does not have the power to revoke the results of the presidential elections and thus make it more difficult for legislators to question them.
Source: TSF
