After Their Break, Congress Will Have 4 Days to Avoid a Government Shutdown
When members of the House of Representatives return to Washington from a nearly three-week break at the end of the month, they will have left themselves just four legislative days to come to some sort of agreement that will allow the federal government to continue operating after its current spending authorization expires. For multiple reasons, many people in Washington doubt they’ll be able to do it.
The Republican leadership in this Congress has not, so far at least, been particularly adept at getting its troops all marching in the same direction. Hard right elements in the House Republican conference tend to use must-pass bills like this one to drag concessions out of the rest of the GOP. And House Democrats have shown little appetite for bailing the majority out without getting some concessions of their own.
In addition, Mick Mulvaney, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, is reportedly pushing both sharp spending cuts and a rider to the spending bill that would cut off large amounts of federal funding to so-called “sanctuary cities” that don’t cooperate with federal immigration authorities -- the latter is an absolute non-starter for House Democrats.
But in an interview Friday, Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said that he remains hopeful that Congress will find a way to keep the lights on at the end of the month, most likely by punting the hard decisions about the spending bill by passing a continuing resolution that would buy leaders another 15 or 30 days to work out a final spending deal for the remainder of fiscal 2017.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/break-congress-4-days-avoid-091500430.html
Think they can get it done?
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