GOP eyes mammoth to-do list

Legislative logjam awaits Congress after holiday break

WASHINGTON — An iffy health care vote. An unresolved budget resolution. A heavy debt ceiling lift. And, of course, there is that tax overhaul plan.

Congress has a lot to do, and it doesn’t have much time. So much for a lazy July in Washington.

When members of Congress return next week from their Fourth of July break, they will be greeted by a mammoth legislative logjam. Republicans are increasingly skeptical that they can get everything done. There are even calls from some to forgo their sacred August recess — a respite from the capital in its swampiest month.

“Our current Senate calendar shows only 33 potential working days remaining before the end of the fiscal year,” a group of 10 Republican senators wrote Friday in a letter to Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, highlighting the deadline at the end of September. “This does not appear to give us enough time to adequately address the issues that demand immediate attention.”

The first order of business when lawmakers return remains reaching a swift conclusion to the debate over how to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, an ambition that has bedeviled Republicans since Trump entered the White House. A vote on health care could drag on until mid-July or later depending on when Senate Republicans deliver a new bill to the Congressional Budget Office for scoring.

The straggling health bill has backed up other major priorities, setting the stage for a government shutdown or even a default in the fall if the debt ceiling is not raised in time.

The Congressional Budget Office said last week that the Treasury can probably go until mid-October before it exhausts its “extraordinary powers” to keep paying the federal government’s bills. But Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, has been pressuring Congress to lift the debt ceiling by the end of July to avoid disrupting the markets.

Perhaps equally complicated for a factionalized Republican caucus is the task of reaching an agreement on a budget resolution. This is necessary for unlocking the legislative tool, known as reconciliation, that will allow Republicans to embark on rewriting the tax code without the help of Democrats.

But so far consensus has been elusive. House Republicans have been wrestling with a budget package that would increase military spending above what Trump requested in his budget and higher than the caps imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011. However, they have been unable to agree on how to spread the pain of $200 billion in spending cuts.

Passing a budget that lifts the caps will be an especially difficult challenge because it will require the support of Democrats in the Senate. The Democrats are loath to help without increases in spending for domestic programs.

That confluence of fiscal battles could end up putting Trump’s tax overhaul in retreat. Trump’s economic advisers and leaders in Congress have promised to unveil a unified tax plan soon after Labor Day, leaving them with little time to reach agreement on many contentious issues.

Republicans have so far failed to agree on whether a border adjustment tax on imports will be part of a final plan. There is also no consensus on how to handle the deductibility of corporate interest expenses and how to prevent taxpayers from using a lower pass-through tax rate on small businesses as a loophole.

The business world is growing increasingly impatient. Last week four of the biggest lobbying groups — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Federation of Independent Business — urged congressional leaders to stay focused on their all-important goal of tax cuts. “Given the historic opportunity before Congress, no other reforms under consideration rise to the importance of pro-growth, comprehensive tax reform,” they said.