With So Much Left to do, Congress takes a Vacation for the Next Six Weeks
The members of Congress left town late last week for their annual August recess. However, they left a huge pile of work with little time left to finish it.
The House of Representatives isn’t scheduled to return to work until Sept. 12, leaving only 12 days to finish work on the 12 bills needed to fund the government by the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1.
While the Senate is much farther ahead in its work on the 12 bills, most Congressional observers believe there is so much to do that a government shutdown is likely unless they can manage to, once again, pass stopgap funding legislation.
However, passing stopgap legislation is also in question because a number of ultra-conservative Republicans in the House aren’t bothered by a shutdown.
According to Bloomberg News, “President Joe Biden and congressional leaders had hoped a hard-fought compromise on spending caps as part of a deal to avoid a US debt default would pave the way for a relatively smooth budget process. But a push by conservatives to make deeper cuts and attach language on abortion, transgender, and other social issues has upended those plans.”
Those ultra-conservative members want to slash the House spending bills — which are already lower than the deal negotiated by President Biden and Congress in the debt ceiling deal — by an additional $115 billion.
Meanwhile, the House spent part of its time last week investigating UFOs.
