Some of you may remember an old pop song called
“See You In September.”
I won’t sing it.
The idea of this song was a joyful reunion
in the fall.
But use that same phrase in Washington right now
and it seems more like a warning …
or even a threat.
I’m Ron Elving, and today in my office hours
we’re going to be talking about the heavy
agenda and the tight schedule that faces Congress
when it finally gets back here from its August recess.
Here’s what President Trump says he wants
Congress to do:
No. 1: Go back to the health care issue and
repeal and replace Obamacare.
No. 2: Give him an infrastructure bill worth
something like a trillion dollars.
And No. 3: Reform the federal tax code for
both businesses and individuals.
Congress would dearly love to do all those
things, and may eventually do most of them.
But not this September, because there are
three other issues Congress has to deal with
first or we may be facing a government shutdown.
Now, that’s always a theoretical possibility
every time we get to the end of a fiscal year
at the end of September.
But this year, it looks like a real prospect
because President Trump is saying he’s not
going to participate in the deal-making unless
he gets funding for his Mexican border wall.
Now, the first thing they need to do is the
budget resolution, both as a basis for the
spending bills and also to set the rules that
they hope to use for passing tax reform later
on in the fall without filibusters.
That’s obviously important to that legislation.
Then we need the spending bills.
There are 12 of them.
Only four have passed the House.
Zero have passed the Senate.
We’re not going to see them all get done
in just 12 legislative days,
which is all we have in September.
So there will be a continuing resolution.
We’ve seen these before.
They just keep things going.
They kick the decisions down the road, and
eventually we’ll come back and pass those
bills, probably in one big omnibus late this fall.
And then third -- and perhaps most difficult
-- we have to raise the federal debt limit.
That’s because we’ve already passed the
last limit
that was set a couple of years ago.
And we’re going to run out of cash to pay
the federal payroll, pay for all the things
the federal government buys, and service the
debt — the existing debt —
which is now at about $20 trillion.
If we don’t service that debt, the United
States goes into default on some of its obligations.
And that casts doubt on all other debt issued
by the United States.
And that is pretty much the gold standard
for world credit markets.
Has been for generations.
Not a happy prospect.
So … see you in September!
I’m Ron Elving at NPR.
Thanks for coming to my office hours.
