【中美创新时报2024 年 12 月 21 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）无论是否出于战略考虑，拜登在混乱的支出斗争中公开缺席，都凸显了他总统任期的平静最后一章。对此《波士顿环球报》记者Sam Brodey 作了下述报道。
周五，当拜登总统和第一夫人吉尔·拜登在几英里外的国会大厦参加儿童国家医院向患者和家属朗读“圣诞节前夜”的传统时，这却是另一件事的前夜。
他负责的政府正濒临关闭。
虽然许多人对这一发展感到不安——当选总统唐纳德·特朗普就是其中的佼佼者——但拜登却没有。
在截止日期前几天，特朗普和他的盟友埃隆·马斯克破坏了一项为政府和其他优先事项提供资金的两党协议，而总统却默默地置身事外。周三，众议院议长迈克·约翰逊开始忙于寻找最后一刻的解决方案，以便通过他的议院，即民主党控制的参议院，并让特朗普满意，而这位对任何法案都有实际否决权的人并没有就此事发表任何公开声明。
在国会山的戏剧性事件、来自海湖庄园的愤怒信件和马斯克在 X 上的帖子之间，共和党的内斗几乎淹没了一些重要的事情：拜登的脱离，在很大程度上，是他执政时代结束和特朗普执政时代开始的象征性标志。
特朗普在支出谈判中扔了一个债务上限手榴弹。原因如下。
除了公开保持沉默之外，没有迹象表明拜登正在幕后积极努力，以阻止特朗普明确想归咎于他的政府停摆。直到周五早上，白宫才证实拜登刚刚与两位民主党国会领袖——参议院多数党领袖查克·舒默和众议院少数党领袖哈基姆·杰弗里斯——通了电话。
在周五的简报会上，当被问及拜登是否与约翰逊交谈时，白宫新闻秘书卡琳·让-皮埃尔拒绝回答拜登是否与约翰逊交谈过，但她表示白宫官员一直与国会领导人保持密切联系。
拜登和他的团队可能故意袖手旁观，将焦点集中在共和党内部的分歧和特朗普造成的混乱上，这些分歧占据了头条新闻，并引发了人们对特朗普第二届政府将如何治理的质疑。
当被问及拜登缺席可能是他总统任期内最后一次重大立法斗争时，让-皮埃尔每次都声称共和党制造了“混乱”，必须解决它。 她坚称总统的不干预态度并不是什么新鲜事。
“这是我们以前多次采取过的策略，”她说。
民主党国会领导人在最近的支出和预算之争中发挥了主导作用，但拜登至少在其中的一些争斗中发挥了一定作用。2023 年 10 月，在又一次疯狂努力在最后一刻通过一项临时拨款决议后，拜登斥责众议院共和党人：“够了就是够了。”
值得注意的是，本周的情况是在拜登周三前往特拉华州纪念 52 年前他的第一任妻子和女儿不幸去世周年之际发生的。周四他返回华盛顿时，记者们无法向他询问支出之争，周五他前往医院，这是自支出计划首次失败以来他唯一一次公开露面时，记者们也没有机会问他。
从实际角度来看，没有迹象表明拜登的脱离是否影响了这场斗争的结果。周五晚上，共和党领导的众议院在民主党近乎一致的支持下，终于通过了新版法案，为政府提供资金直至 3 月，同时还为灾难援助和农业救济提供资金。尽管政府停摆的可能性越来越小，但民主党人确实对最终的法案表示了一些失望。预计参议院将迅速批准该法案，即使他们没有在午夜前通过，也可以避免任何严重的政府停摆影响。
但在联邦政府面临重大利害关系的时期，总统的沉默可能会进一步强调这样一种说法：自 11 月 5 日特朗普获胜以来，他已经淡出了办公室和总统宝座。
在任期的“跛脚鸭”时期，拜登在公开场合的露面比平时少，尽管他的白宫高级助手发誓要利用他们在任的剩余时间推动他的议程。除了接受友好对话者的采访外，他几乎没有发表过广泛的选举后评论，例如反特朗普媒体品牌 Meidas Touch 和参议员伯尼·桑德斯的高级顾问经营的一家左倾媒体。在过去一个月的两次国际旅行中，一次是去南美国家，一次是去安哥拉，拜登一次都没有与媒体交谈。
与此同时，特朗普兴高采烈地抓住了这一空白，寻求在 1 月 20 日宣誓就职之前有效地履行总统职责。他前往巴黎参加巴黎圣母院重新开放仪式，法国总统埃马纽埃尔·马克龙等外国领导人称赞他是一位在任总统。
然而，直到周三，还没有迹象表明特朗普打算对年底的支出法案行使任何事实上的否决权——更不用说他的亲密盟友约翰逊谈判的一揽子计划了。但当保守派对法案条款的强烈反对（这在很大程度上要归咎于马斯克的完全错误的说法）时，这位当选总统宣布反对，并发誓要“初选”任何反对他的共和党议员，从而使这一进程陷入混乱。
让事情变得更加复杂的是，特朗普坚持要求国会暂停两年的债务上限，这样他就不必在担任总统期间处理紧张的政治问题。
特朗普给出的理由很明确：他想给拜登最后一击。特朗普在与当选副总统 JD Vance 的联合声明中表示：“提高债务上限并不好，但我们宁愿在拜登的监督下这样做。”
周四，共和党人对这一要求表示抗议，并否决了特朗普支持的一项法案，特朗普试图接受政府关门，只要拜登承担责任。
“如果政府要关门，那就现在就开始，在拜登政府的领导下，而不是在 1 月 20 日之后，在‘特朗普’的领导下，”特朗普在 Truth Social 上写道。“这是拜登需要解决的问题，但如果共和党人能帮忙解决，他们会的！”
总统本人没有回应，这给了共和党批评者弹药。据 NBC 新闻报道，北卡罗来纳州共和党参议员 Thom Tillis 说：“第 46 任总统现在在哪里？他对此有何看法？”“过去一个月里，我没有听到他发表任何言论。”
白宫方面也有很多意见，拜登也不例外。周四晚上，让-皮埃尔发表声明，抨击特朗普支持的决议，称其为“亿万富翁的礼物”，该决议对最初的两党立法进行了重大修改。
在周五的新闻发布会上，让-皮埃尔反复指出，共和党破坏了即将通过的协议，并坚称这是特朗普和约翰逊需要解决的问题。记者们继续问，为什么是她而不是拜登提出这些论点，并谈论政府停摆的灾难性影响。
有一次，一名记者直截了当地问了一句：“在这个时候，总统在领导吗？”
“总统是美国总统，”让-皮埃尔回答道，“他正在领导。”
题图：拜登夫妇周五在华盛顿特区儿童国家医院探望了患者和家属。TING SHEN/AFP via Getty Images
附原英文报道：
As Trump causes drama in Congress, Biden stays silent and on the sidelines
Strategic or not, Biden’s public absence from a chaotic spending fight underscored a quiet final chapter of his presidency
By Sam Brodey Globe Staff,Updated December 20, 2024
The Bidens visited patients and families at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C, on Friday.TING SHEN/AFP via Getty Images
WASHINGTON — As President Biden and first lady Jill Biden participated in their tradition of reading “ ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” to patients and families at Children’s National Hospital on Friday, a few miles away at the Capitol, ‘twas the eve of something else.
The government he is in charge of was teetering on the verge of a shutdown.
And while many creatures were stirring over this development — President-elect Donald Trump chief among them — Biden was not.
The president kept quietly to the sidelines as Trump and his ally Elon Musk torpedoed a bipartisan deal to fund the government and other priorities days before the deadline. As House Speaker Mike Johnson began scrambling on Wednesday for a last-minute solution that could pass his chamber, the Democratic-controlled Senate, and satisfy Trump, the man with actual veto power over any bill did not make any public statements about the situation.
Between the Capitol Hill drama and the angry missives from Mar-a-Lago and Musk posts on X, the GOP infighting nearly drowned out something significant: that Biden’s disengagement, as much as anything, was a symbolic marker of the close of his time in power, and the dawn of Trump’s.
Trump tossed a debt limit grenade into spending talks. Here’s why.
Beyond his public silence, no indication emerged that Biden was aggressively working behind the scenes to head off a shutdown that Trump explicitly wanted to blame on him. It was only on Friday morning that the White House confirmed Biden had just spoken by phone with the two Democratic congressional leaders, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries.
When asked during her Friday briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to answer if Biden had spoken with Johnson, though she said White House officials had been in close contact with congressional leaders.
It’s possible Biden and his team deliberately sat back to keep the focus on Republicans’ internal disagreements and the chaos injected by Trump, which dominated headlines and sparked questions about how the second Trump administration might govern.
Pressed repeatedly on Biden’s absence from what is likely the last major legislative fight of his presidency, Jean-Pierre responded each time by asserting that Republicans had created the “mess” and had to fix it. And she insisted there was nothing new about the president’s hands-off approach.
“This is a strategy we have done many times before,” she said.
Democratic congressional leaders have played lead roles in shaping recent spending and budgetary fights, but Biden has at least been somewhat vocal in some of them. In October 2023, after yet another frenzied effort to pass a stopgap funding resolution at the last minute, Biden chided House Republicans: “Enough is enough is enough.”
Notably, the situation this week developed as Biden was in Delaware on Wednesday to observe the anniversary of the tragic death of his first wife and daughter 52 years ago. Reporters were unable to ask him about the spending fight when he returned to Washington on Thursday, nor were they given a chance to ask him as he traveled to the hospital on Friday for his only public appearance since the spending plan first blew up.
On a practical level, there’s no indication whether Biden’s disengagement affected the outcome of the fight. On Friday evening, the GOP-led House, with near-unanimous Democratic help, finally managed to pass a new version of the bill to fund the government until March, along with widely desired funds for disaster aid and farm relief. Democrats did express some disappointment with the legislation that resulted, however, even if the prospect of a shutdown grew more unlikely. The Senate was expected to approve the legislation quickly, which would avert any serious shutdown impacts even if they did not pass it right before midnight.
But the president’s silence amid a stretch with consequential stakes for the federal government will likely further underscore the narrative that he has faded from the office and the bully pulpit of the presidency since Trump’s victory on Nov. 5.
Biden has been scarcer than usual in public during the lame duck period, even as his top White House aides vowed to make use of the remainder of their time in office to push through his agenda. He has given few extensive post-election comments, save for interviews with friendly interlocutors, such as the anti-Trump media brand Meidas Touch and a left-leaning outlet run by a top adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders. During two international trips in the past month, one to South American countries and one to Angola, Biden did not once speak with the press.
Trump, meanwhile, has gleefully seized the void, seeking to effectively act as president well before he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20. Traveling to Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral, he was hailed by foreign leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, as something of an incumbent.
Until Wednesday, however, there was no indication Trump was intending to exercise any de facto veto power over year-end spending legislation — much less a package negotiated by Johnson, his close ally. But when conservative backlash grew over provisions in the bill, thanks in large part to flatly incorrect claims made by Musk, the president-elect threw the process into chaos by declaring his opposition and vowing to “primary” any GOP lawmaker who crossed him.
To make matters more complicated, Trump insisted Congress add a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling so he wouldn’t have to deal with the fraught political football as president.
The reason Trump gave was clear: he wanted to stick Biden with one last indignity. “Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch,” Trump said in a joint statement with Vice President-elect JD Vance.
As Republicans revolted over that demand and tanked a Trump-backed bill Thursday, Trump attempted to embrace a shutdown, so long as Biden took the blame.
“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under ‘TRUMP,’ ” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!”
The president did not respond himself, giving ammunition to his GOP critics. “Where is the 46th president right now? What is he saying about this?” said Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, according to NBC News. “I have not heard him weigh in one ounce over the last month.”
The White House weighed in plenty, if not Biden. On Thursday night, Jean-Pierre issued a statement torching the Trump-backed resolution, which made significant changes to the initial bipartisan legislation, as a “giveaway for billionaires.”
During her Friday press briefing, Jean-Pierre repeatedly noted that Republicans blew up the deal that was on track to pass, insisting it was Trump and Johnson’s problem to solve. Reporters continued to ask why it was that she, and not Biden, was making those arguments and talking about the disastrous impacts of a shutdown.
At one point, a reporter asked a blunt question. “In this moment, is the president leading?”
“The president is the president of the United States,” Jean-Pierre replied, “and he is leading.”
