The House’s minimal progress so far on advancing the budget means that when it returns from the summer recess in September it will have very little time to prevent a government shutdown looming on October 1 when 2017 funding runs out, The Hill reported on Sunday.
The House goes into the August recess with no specific plan for preventing the shutdown.
Although four security-related spending bills have passed, the House must still, after returning from recess, approve the additional eight bills, and reconcile them with the Senate in just a few weeks in order to finish the task before the deadline.
“September is going to be a very difficult month," House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows told The Hill. "I mean obviously all of this is coming into play right away, all the fiscal issues and deadlines are going to make it extremely difficult to get everything done in a piece-by-piece basis.”
Republican infighting on such issues as the extent of cuts to mandatory spending in areas such as welfare and education are hampering progress.
“I have serious concerns about the budget in its current form,” Pennsylvania Rep. Charlie Dent told Politico. “The focus of this budget should be on reconciliation instructions for tax reform. … Trying to use mandatory savings in the same reconciliation instructions is going to make tax reform much harder, not easier. Anybody with a pair of eyes can see this.”
The various difficulties are increasingly convincing Republicans that the only way to avoid a government shutdown will be to pass a short-term continuing resolution, which would maintain current funding levels, according to The Hill.
However, while that would postpone a shutdown, another deadline on the debt ceiling gives Congress less flexibility, because if nothing is done the U.S. Treasury will not be able to pay its bills sometime in mid-October.
Related stories: