Washington - (AFP) - The US Senate has approved a federal budget bill that includes $45 billion in aid to Ukraine and is scheduled to be put to a vote in the House of Representatives in the coming hours.

The $1,700 billion budget was adopted in the Senate by 68 votes to 29. It is expected to be approved without problems in the House of Representatives on Friday, in order to avoid paralysis of state institutions, starting from the evening of the same day, if Congress does not adopt the text in both houses.

Representatives hope to pass the text, which covers the fiscal year ending in September 2023, before the end of the day, although some disagreements over minute details could keep them in Washington, which is threatened by a winter storm that could cause transportation chaos.

"This bill must pass because it will benefit families, our veterans, our national security, and even the integrity of our Democratic institutions," Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said before the vote.

In fact, the bill includes an amendment to a law dating back to the nineteenth century. It has come to stipulate that the US vice president cannot interfere directly in approving the election results.

And former President Donald Trump took advantage of the ambiguity of the old text to indicate that his deputy, Mike Pence, could have stopped Joe Biden’s assumption of power after his unrecognized victory, and this was one of the elements that led to the storming of the (Capitol) building on January 6, 2021. .

Trump, a candidate for the 2024 elections, described the text Thursday as "terrible (...) and full of left-wing disasters, Washington's betrayals and marketing of special interests."

This budget is supposed to finance the work of the US federal state institutions, from the police to diplomacy, the armed forces, economic policy, and others, until September 2023.

The approval of the text in the House of Representatives is not in doubt, with a Democratic majority in it for a few more days, and the day after the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was welcomed by the vast majority of members of Congress.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy called on members of his caucus to vote against the bill in order to postpone the vote and take advantage of a wider margin when returning from the holidays when the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives emanating from the mid-term elections takes over.

But Republican senators largely ignored the call, giving Democrats about two dozen votes to pass the text Thursday afternoon.

A dispute over the issue of immigration nearly toppled the text on Wednesday night.

Democrats and Republicans have clashed over the border policy approved during Trump's era to limit immigration, and conservatives want to keep it. But hours of grueling behind-the-scenes negotiations eventually paved the way for a vote on the text Thursday.

"We have a difference of opinion on immigration policy. We're not going to resolve that in this budget," Democratic Senator Chris Murphy told reporters on Wednesday night.

He added that "allowing this dispute to stop aid to Ukraine intended to keep people alive during the cold winter (...) is completely unimaginable."