Congress will be out of Washington for the entire month of August when the Senate leaves at the end of the week of July 28. The House is already gone, and neither chamber is scheduled to return until Sept. 9.
Congress is departing without sending any of the 12 yearly appropriations bills to President Biden’s desk for a signature. When lawmakers return, they will have just 15 days to approve government funding, otherwise there will be a shutdown.
“If history is prologue, we’re going to have a CR. I see very little likelihood of a budget going through before the end of the year, I think we’re destined to have a CR, unfortunately,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said.
A CR, or a continuing resolution, means lawmakers will keep funding everything at current levels. However, there is bipartisan agreement that CRs negatively impact government operations.
To fully fund the government for an entire year, Congress needs to approve 12 bills that cover each department and agency.
Here’s where each chamber stands:
The House approved 5 out of the 12 appropriations bills on a party line basis. Republicans slashed funding to a level that Senate Democrats would never accept, so the bills are dead on arrival in that chamber.
The Senate Appropriations Committee is working on a bipartisan basis to approve 11 out of the 12 bills before members leave Thursday. None of the bills have received a vote by the full chamber and they added $34 billion in spending that House Republicans oppose.
Lawmakers don’t think they will be able to get this done before the 118th Congress comes to a close in December.
That means the work of fully funding the federal government will have to wait until the newly elected president, House and Senate are sworn in in January.
“I’m not optimistic about it getting done this year. We’re in the political silly season and we only have three Scaramuccis left in terms of legislative days,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said.
Tillis is referring to Anthony Scaramucci who was fired as the White House communications director 10 days after he was hired in 2017. Now, extraordinarily short political life cycles are sometimes described as Scaramuccis.
Here’s the schedule:
The Senate comes back Sept. 9 and works for three straight weeks until senators leave to campaign for the entire month of October. Members return in mid-November with 24 days left before they adjourn for good. The new Congress will be sworn in on Jan. 3.
Lawmakers often say elections have consequences and it’s already clear that they will experience the effects of their inaction in January 2025.
